Professional Development Web Seminar: Forces and Motion — Balloon Aerodynamics Challenge

Professional Development Web Seminar

As part of a series of electronic professional development experiences for educators, the NASA Explorer Schools project and the National Science Teachers Association are hosting a 90-minute live professional development Web seminar for educators on April 17, 2013, at 6:30 p.m. EDT. This Web seminar will introduce the Forces and Motion: Balloon Aerodynamics Challenge for students. This activity provides firsthand information about density, neutral buoyancy and drag, which is then used to solve a problem. The activity provides many opportunities for incorporating national mathematics, science and technology learning standards into your curriculum.

This will be the final time this seminar is offered during the current school year.

For more information and to register online, visit the NSTA Learning Center.

NASA Super-Tiger Balloon Shatters Flight Record

The balloon, ready to launch, dwarfs launch crew standing on the ice field.If you are using the NASA Explorer Schools featured lesson Engineering Design: Forces and Motion — Balloon Aerodynamics Challenge, you may extend the lesson’s relevancy by introducing your students to NASA’s Super-TIGER balloon.

Flying high over Antarctica, a long-duration balloon has broken the record for longest flight by a balloon of its size.

The record-breaking balloon, carrying the Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder — or Super-TIGER — experiment, has been afloat for 46 days and is on its third orbit around the South Pole.

This feat is an outstanding achievement for NASA’s Astrophysics balloon team. Keeping these huge balloons aloft for such long periods lets NASA do “forefront” science that would be difficult to do otherwise.

To read more about this record-setting flight, visit https://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/news/supertiger-record.html.

You can find Engineering Design: Forces and Motion — Balloon Aerodynamics Challenge on the NES Virtual Campus.

Professional Development Web Seminar: Engineering Design: Forces and Motion — Balloon Aerodynamics Challenge

Professional Development Web Seminar

As part of a series of electronic professional development experiences for educators, the NASA Explorer Schools project and the National Science Teachers Association are hosting a 90-minute live professional development Web seminar for educators on Dec. 19, 2012, at 6:30 p.m. EST. This Web seminar will introduce the Forces and Motion: Balloon Aerodynamics Challenge for students. This activity provides firsthand information about density, neutral buoyancy and drag, which is then used to solve a problem. The activity provides many opportunities for incorporating national mathematics, science and technology learning standards into your curriculum.

This seminar will be repeated on Apr. 17, 2013.

For more information and to register online, visit the NSTA Learning Center.

Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.

Have you Heard the one About the Rubber Chicken?

Camilla the rubber chicken at Kennedy Space Center in front of the Vehicle Assembly BuildingLast month, when the sun unleashed the most intense radiation storm since 2003, peppering satellites with charged particles and igniting strong auroras around both poles, a group of high school students in Bishop, Calif., knew just what to do.They launched a rubber chicken.The students inflated a helium balloon and used it to send the fowl, named “Camilla,” to an altitude of 36.6 km, or 120,000 ft, where it was exposed to high-energy solar protons at point blank range.


Camilla flew twice–once on Mar. 3 before the radiation storm and again on Mar. 10 while the storm was in full swing, giving the students a basis for comparison.


Read more about how the chicken got to the “other side” by visiting http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/19apr_camilla/


If you’re interested in ballooning, check out the NES lesson, Engineering Design: Forces and Motion — Balloon Aerodynamics Challenge (requires log in to the NES Virtual Campus website).