department highlights
P hy si cs
Joseph Perez, Department Chairman
Auburn University and Auburn City Schools
educators fly in NASA’s “Weightless Wonder”
Educators from Auburn University and Auburn City Schools
floated like astronauts during a once-in-a-lifetime flight on NASA’s
“Weightless Wonder” aircraft. The team of six educators calls
themselves the “Flying Tigers,” and as they floated, they conducted
experiments that were set up in a clear plastic box to see how various
objects and scientific concepts would alter under a reduced gravity
environment. According to the team, words cannot accurately describe
the feeling of being weightless.
“It’s almost as if someone is stepping on your chest really, really
hard and that’s the high gravity phase of the flight. And then, as you
make the transition to the zero-G phase, all of this pressure leaves your
body and then you float. That’s the sensation. We have been trying to
figure out the words to describe it. There is nothing in your everyday
experience that really can relate to it,” said Edward Thomas, Auburn
physics professor and coordinator of the Plasma Sciences Laboratory
and Flying Tigers team mentor.
The Weightless Wonder is actually a modified Boeing 727 aircraft.
The aircraft provides weightlessness 18 to 25 seconds at a time by
executing a series of about 30 roller-coaster-like parabolas – a steep
climb followed by a free fall – over the Gulf of Mexico. The program is
known as the Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program, and it gives
educators an opportunity to propose, build, and fly reduced gravity
experiments during the free falls, thus gathering data in the unique
environment as they experience near-weightlessness.
The flight initiated from the Johnson Space Center’s Ellington
Field in Houston, Tex., in July 2011. When the Flying Tigers arrived
at NASA, they went through extensive physiological training,
including safety and motion-sickness training. They also participated
in experimental setup and reviews, and curriculum workshops before
flying in the Weightless Wonder. The Flying Tigers’ experiments
focused on the equilibrium and stability of solids and liquids during
the microgravity and hypergravity phases of the flight, and they have
24
Journey/2012
provided the results to NASA as well as students and educators in
classrooms around the state.
“I think the strength of our particular group was that we had
our teachers propose experiments that they were already doing in
their classrooms,” Thomas said. “The idea was to carry out a series of
experiments on the plane to see what the difference is between what
happens on the ground compared to what happens under microgravity
conditions.”
The team put many hours into researching and building the
experiments they performed on the Weightless Wonder aircraft, and
all of the experiments were
video-recorded. Experiments
conducted on the flight
included a density lab using
different liquids to see how
they would respond in
microgravity conditions, and
a pump structure simulating
the human circulatory system
that demonstrated what would
happen to the human body in
microgravity conditions, among others.
Thomas created a website (http://psl.physics.auburn.edu/
flyingtigers) which offers in-classroom, educational ideas that
correspond with the team’s experiments aboard the aircraft. Also on
the website are ideas on how to integrate videos of the experiments
into the classroom.
The Flying Tigers was the only team from the Southeast to
participate in the flight. The team members were: Thomas; Elizabeth
Bass and George Clausell from Dean Road Elementary School;
Jennifer Spencer from Cary Woods Elementary School; Mark Jones,
PhD, from Drake Middle School; and Wayne Strickland from
Alabama Math Science Technology Initiative.
Participation in the flight was part of a collaboration between the
Auburn Plasma Sciences Laboratory, the Princeton Plasma Physics
Laboratory Science Education Program and NASA’s Reduced
Gravity Office. The Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program is
made possible through a new partnership between NASA and the
Department of Energy.