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High
school students and teachers are going to get a taste of astronaut
training this fall. Would you like to join them?
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August
12, 2005: Summer days spent relaxing can leave kids
a little "spaced out" when they return to the classroom.
Perfect! They're ready for astronaut training.
 On
Sept. 29, NASA and Ball State University will bring the experience
of weightlessness into the classroom via an "electronic
field trip" onboard a Boeing C-9 aircraft that NASA uses
to train astronauts for the weightlessness of space. If you'd
like to ride along, all you need is a high-speed internet
connection (many classrooms have them) and a web browser to
display the broadcast.
Right:
Astronauts in training onboard a reduced gravity aircraft.
[More]
"Electronic
field trips (EFTs) are a great way to expose kids to new and
exotic experiences," says Mark Kornmann, director of
Ball State University's Electronic Field Trip program.
The
Boeing C-9 simulates weightlessness through a series of steep
climbs and dives between 24,000 and 33,000 feet, making passengers
float in mid-air for up to 30 seconds at a time. Six teams
of high-school teachers will actually ride onboard the aircraft
on Sept. 29—and it won't be just a joy ride. They'll be conducting
scientific experiments dreamed up by their own students. During
the precious moments of weightlessness, they'll study the
physics of liquid bridges, measure the tumble rate of a two
pound "pico-satellite," record the behavior of weightless
magnets and much more.
Above:
A screen shot of the EFT Web site. [More]
"This
flight is part of our World Year of Physics 2005 celebration,"
says Vinaya Sathyasheelappa of the American Physical Society,
which is co-sponsoring the flight with NASA and the American
Association of Physics Teachers.
What
is the World Year of Physics? One hundred years ago, Albert
Einstein published three papers so important to science that
physicists call it the annus mirabilis--or "miracle
year." To mark Einstein's creative outburst, 2005 has
been declared the "World Year of Physics." All around
the world people are celebrating the Year with conferences,
meetings, educational workshops—and weightless airplane rides!
The
Electronic Field Trip to the Boeing C-9, which targets 7th-
through 12th-grade students, will feature live coverage of
in-flight experiments, pre-flight footage from the hanger
where teachers, NASA scientists and students prepare for weightlessness,
and a tutorial on the physics of free-fall. The broadcast
airs in three consecutive hour-long segments, allowing teachers
flexibility in scheduling.
"We
try to make sure that in each hour the kids are going to experience
the plane," Kornmann said. "It's really portable
and teachers can pick and choose what they want to do."
Interested
teachers can sign up online at the EFT
Web site. Registration is free, thanks to support from
the Best Buy Foundation.
The
nine-year-old Electronic Field Trip program takes elementary,
middle, and high-school students on four to six virtual trips
per year, with past EFTs ranging from the Grand Canyon in
Arizona to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. To date,
an estimated 13 million to 15 million people have viewed each
program, which are archived on the program’s Web site.
Visit
http://www.bsu.edu/eft
for more information.
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Author: Kim Taylor
| Editor:
Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
|
