Pyramid Lake, Nevada on the right, Lake Tahoe in upper left from about 27,000 meters (90,000 feet). Note the thin blue line of Earth’s atmosphere and the dark of space above.
Despite weather and other conditions that delayed the 2020 launch of the High Hopes Balloon for weeks we successfully launched June 16th. The flight path did not follow the predicted path but it landed in a great spot for recovery about 100 meters off the road on the shore of a dry lake bed.
Helium is very hard to get right now so we had to inflate with hydrogen. Fortunately, we have the special suits and equipment to use a flammable gas. An advantage to hydrogen is it is considerably cheaper than helium. Dr. Wang inflated on his own while we wore masks and social distanced. The launch went smoothly, I got the honor of releasing, but soon afterwards the battery pack failed on the HAM radio transmitter that allows tracking the flight in real time. We use 2 SPOT satellite Trackers as back-up to locate the payloads once they land.
2 SPOTs worked out well because one of them failed as well. The 4 GoPro cameras all worked well. The payloads hit hard on landing and all 4 cameras broke off their mounts but continued to work.
The video below shows the launch, flight, burst and landing, including some still and slow motion. You’ll see the world’s “High Hopes” printed on biodegradable paper embedded with wildflower seeds being released using a payload originally designed by local students – I followed their plan to build and included 2 used surgical masks hanging from the bottom to honor our 1st responders.
This post was inspired by a conversation on Twitter initiated by Dave Quinn and responded to by “DesignMakeTeach” about the value of taking time away from a project and then coming back to it:
Along the way Gary Stager added:
Coming back to learning after a period of time is a vital, powerful piece that is under emphasized, overlooked or time constrained out. I bet if you think back to some of your own experiences in life, you just might remember a time you were away from a project, problem or writing piece and upon coming back with “fresh eyes” made improvements, solved problems, perhaps started over or made any of an array other “edits” of the previous work.
Frustration, loss of motivation and vision, lack of processing time, tiredness and more, all stand in the way of our best products and learning. Having time away, at least overnight, diminishes, if not even overcomes many of those issues. The value of sticking with a project/problem over days and weeks (sometimes months), where many redesigns and iterations can be cycled through in a collaborative, communicative environment is best. Yes, that is hard to fit into our full plates, but students would benefit from learning this way at least several times a year.
Thankfully I’ve had experiences that led me to search out and emphasize sticking with and coming back to a project over time. Today I note many educators don’t value this messy learning approach. They haven’t experienced it firsthand so they haven’t developed an understanding or appreciation for it. Many schools make scheduling time for doing projects and messy learning pretty much impossible and educators assume (and unfortunately are too often right) that they don’t have “permission.” My last 2 years in the classroom I had to sneak projects into my days. I literally would keep my ears open to when our administrators wouldn’t be around and messy learning could happen (when they’d attend meetings or conferences for whole days was gold).
For some having a “Messy” room over a period of time with piles of materials, paint, glue and other spills … general messiness, along with using “sacrosanct” time usually required for language, math and remediation blocks is just not conceivable given their mandates. To me this is educational malpractice. Messy learning is just as or more important as your language arts or math program.
There’s lots of talk about allowing kids to fail, and I generally agree, but we also have to realize the importance of allowing students to persevere and succeed. Students that are less successful with, “research-based programs” and other forms of traditional schooling, often connect and shine and find avenues to learning, sometimes for the first or almost the first time in their lives when given access to messy learning.
When observing and mentoring in classrooms these days (I’m currently a teacher on special assignment) I see mostly projects that are either not really projects or projects that are recipes shoehorned into a specific time period that disregards time to progress through a design process. Often if some groups even get an initial prototype maybe “mostly finished”- time for evaluation, and even one redesign, much less multiple times, are left behind along with most of the learning. And it isn’t just the “making” learning that is lost, but the invaluable real connections / integrations to language, math, the arts, social studies and other curriculums.
Projects that take time also build the collaboration skills we keep hearing are important. Early each school year my students would role play how to deal with each other’s off track, “uncollaborative,” behaviors, and over time they found out how productive being collaborative and supportive are. Its amazing how time flies and the classroom is a happier place to be then. Visitors pick up on that vibe too.
I would add that having students take a project every once in a while to a “polished” conclusion is important. Attitudes about, “its about the process not the product,” are fine to a point, but that struggle to make a final product that works consistently, is stable and perhaps is beautiful is a worthwhile piece as well (not just held together by tape and string and good wishes – although that’s good too).
I photographed this leopard with a Canon pocket camera with a 40x zoom lens in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania in July 2019.
We spent most of our time on safari in Tanzania, and I asked our guide about the reason for the new law. He explained that the small towns (and other areas) we would occasionally pass through had become heavily polluted with plastic trash. Towns were severely blighted with bags and other plastics stuck in trees, bushes, power lines and blowing drifts of trash on the ground. As we were passing through I was impressed by the cleanliness of these towns now. There was an initial national program that collected the plastic and now the goal is to keep them clean by banning plastic bags and other types of plastic trash.
You can imagine this scene with plastic bags stuck in the trees and grasses and how that would effect the wildlife and beauty in so many ways.
Other issues with plastic pollution is that bags collect water when it rains and then become perfect breeding ponds for malaria carrying mosquitoes. Plastics wash into the drainage and sewer systems where they clog and back-up the sewers and eventually dump their load into other waterways and the ocean.
Of course one of the driving forces behind the ban was to keep plastics out of their beloved national parks. Parks that are vital to their economy. Our experience bore this out. The scenery was beyond spectacular. In the parks you are immersed in animals – they are everywhere. And in nine days in the Serengeti I saw no plastic trash, except where it was supposed to be … in the trash.
Plastic pollution is a great STEM challenge for our students of all ages. It is a difficult problem to address, but it effects all of us. It involves not just removing the plastic and micro-plastics from our water and land, but also cutting off the flow of plastics that enter the environment every day. You’ve seen the photos of animals with plastics wrapped around and stuck in their bodies. Those photos of animals and plastic infested waters are also great motivators to our students to get involved with and persevere in finding solutions.
Baby Giraffe. Still had some of its umbilical cord attached.
Students can design machines and other methods to remove plastics that can involve computer programming to operate and stress re-design, and collaboration. Students can also mount marketing and public awareness campaigns using social media in powerful, “real life” contexts where they really make a difference. Think social media and photos, videos and other sharing media used in ethical, meaningful ways to promote keeping plastics out of the environment.
Sunrise over the Serengeti. Wildebeests.
This is “messy” learning for sure. It takes time to do well and so it mostly doesn’t happen in our schools even though we know it is the very kind of learning experience we should be providing. It is the work and powerful learning that is so lacking today. It promotes awareness of the world around us, the wonder and issues the world provides AND the motivation to do real work. Work that cries out for collaboration, problem solving, creativity and perseverance.
STEM and inquiry learning should not only be jumping from one cool project or experiment to the next. We leave too much of the potential learning behind when that happens. At least a few times each year the take a project to a refined ending, including integrating (writing, speaking, social studies, math, PE … really anything) analyzing the data, collaborating (globally if possible), continuing the engineering design cycle through multiple iterations and even taking the time to “polish” the end product. That polishing is where the connection to art often flourishes. Shape, color, textures and more of the finished product are difficult and provide new challenge and problem solving that connects to more students.
Consider the learning projects solving issues like plastic pollution provide for students and jump in!
“Pro tip: print the instruction pages in color and have them laminated. Then place several at tables where people are working so they can refer to them. Works great!“
The guide includes links to video clips, materials lists, examples of projects, and suggestions, besides the colorfully illustrated step by step instructions. A great way to get started at home or in the classroom. The obvious next step would be taking the skills learned here and integrating them with motors, gears and such, whether you have them or get them in a kit such as what is offered in a Hummingbird Bit kit. Then besides hand cranking the movements, you have motorized them and added computer programming to the mix. Check it out!
In my last post I said I would update on the status of payloads and the recovery. The photo on the end of that post (also see below) showed the payloads hanging in a tree – that was all we knew thanks to Eric Wang – he snapped that photo and sent it to us to show he had found the payloads after back country skiing a total of 9 miles to get it.
He didn’t text anything more for hours because the weather was closing in, thunderstorms were forecast for later in the day, so they were in a hurry to get back.
But get them he did – the rocket was gone so we were anxious to download the video to see what happened. I picked up the payloads the next day – note the rocket launcher tube is split in half and hanging by the wires meant to ignite the motor. 4 GoPros now needed to be downloaded (4 to 6 hours of video). This shot from above 100,000 feet just before the balloon burst told the sad news (That’s Lake Tahoe to the right of the payload BTW). You can see the nose of the rocket sticking out from the right of the payload above it – it was supposed to launch from 60,000 feet, so the fact that it was still there at 100,000 feet explained all we needed to know. Note the soda can inside the payload – it came back intact and the students toasted the experiment with sips of “space soda.”
The post mortem afterwards suggests the wiring came loose at some point so no ignition.
Watching the video frame by frame provided evidence of the rocket’s fate. In this screen shot below you can see the rocket falling away to the left just after balloon burst. The strings caught the mount during free fall and busted it loose.
Below is video of the launch from the payload’s perspective. (NOTE: you can see the launch from the ground in my last post.)
Below is the balloon burst from above the south end of Lake Tahoe just above 100,000 feet.
And here is the landing in a tree on a ridge in California near Sierra At Tahoe ski area.
I visited the classes today that designed and built the payloads. I returned their payloads and showed them the videos. There was disappointment that the rocket didn’t launch, but mostly there was excitement and questions and numerous comments about how much they’d learned in the process.
They want to be part of next year’s High Hopes Project and have a very intriguing idea for an experiment. I won’t share too many specifics, but it involves a rocket and breaking the sound barrier.
A highlight of our year is always working with a school or schools to incorporate STEM into launching a high altitude balloon (weather balloon) with student designed payloads attached to altitudes near or above 100,000 feet.
Yesterday was no exception, AND we had the extra added excitement around attempting to launch a small rocket from above 60,000 feet via an altimeter and Arduino set up (we don’t know if that was successful yet).
Prepping rocket launch payload before attachment to balloon.
Helium is very hard to get these days so we filled with hydrogen, fortunately our friends at the University of Nevada, Reno, have all the fireproof suits, gloves, masks and grounding wires (so no static) necessary. They filled while I was in the classroom stringing the rocket payload since the students had re-designed and built it since I was last there. We filled early because we knew it might get a bit windy, and it did – easier to have the balloon filled and tethered than to try and fill in the wind.
After balloon was filled with hydrogen – fireproof suits still on but headgear removed.
Then once the drone was airborne to record the launch, we launched.
Launch filmed from drone.
We could tell almost right away it wasn’t following the predicted flight path … then it seemed to adjust in a more favorable direction … but next it turned due west and went exactly where we didn’t want it to go. Into the heavily forested mountains and over lakes.
Predicted flight path. 10 predictions at once. Yellow dots show predicted burst, blue predicted landing location. These are usually accurate enough, but today “unsettled” atmospherics threw it off.Actual flight track.
We packed up and began the recovery. We drove to Minden, Nevada, parked and watched the balloon high overhead until we saw it burst at over 100,000 feet. We followed it on aprs.fi (which provided the actual flight track above) and our 2 onboard Spot Trace trackers. Once we had a pretty good idea where it was going we continued the chase.
High point reported by aprs.fi – actual high point is a bit higher. We’ll find out once we get the Ham radio transceiver back as it records the actual high point.
After burst the payloads drop very quickly as there is not enough air to inflate the parachute (at that altitude you’re above 98% of the Earth’s atmosphere, considered “near space”). At about 50,000 feet the parachute starts doing its job. As we neared the reported landing spot we mapped out the closest roads for recovery. As we drove we ran into a large tree blocking one road and a large snow drift blocking the other, so we were on foot. Teacher Collin Belnap accompanied us on the recovery and he put together a video of the recovery attempt.
One mile became two and then the GPS pointed up a steep ridge. Despite hours of searching Lou Loftin, who works with me, found the spot the GPS claimed was the landing spot but he found nothing and exhaustion forced him to give up the search.
High on a ridge at over 8,000 feet the GPS claimed the balloon payloads were right here … but they are nowhere in sight.
Meanwhile, Dr. Eric Wang, mechanical engineering associate professor from the University of Nevada, Reno, who had helped with the launch was following our progress (or lack thereof) and decided he and a friend could back country ski to the spot which he had pinpointed. They’d approach from above via the Sierra at Tahoe ski area (closed for the season). So this morning they made the trek and all we’ve gotten back from them so far is this photo showing the parachute and payloads hanging in a tree.
We don’t know anything else … were they able to retrieve? Are they on their way back? I’ll keep you posted and share video, data and what we learn about the rocket launch!
Each night during the week of May 13th a different venue will offer FREE community events that emphasize family engagement in science, technology, STEAM and more.
Educators, you can invite a STEM professional into your classroom to add professional expertise to your lessons including sharing their research projects, collaborating with your classroom on an activity or project or even read a book to your students related to their field. To request a STEM professional, complete a request form by going to: http://www.nvstem.org/ambassador-request-form
I’m going to try and catch up on some long past due posts about the High Hopes Project. Last June we launched from Virginia City High School in Nevada. I posted about the preparation for the launchwhich will give you good background on the payloads students designed. The launch went flawlessly – perfect weather, not a puff of wind.
Besides the student payloads and GoPro cameras, we launched our Flir infrared camera as well which gave us some interesting perspectives. Note the shadows in this shot:
Note the long shadows from the early morning sun.
Then note what appear to be shadows in this screenshot taken from the video shot by our infrared camera soon after launch:
What appear to be shadows are not. They are cooler areas on the ground caused by the shadows of the balloon and students. Note the balloon has already been launched and is 200 feet in the air (or more), how could its shadow be where it was before it launched?
Here is video of the launch in infrared:
And here is the launch taken from the ground:
One of the student payloads was an interesting sound experiment. The question they were trying to answer was: “At high altitude above 98% of the Earth’s atmosphere, would the air be so thin that sound would not travel through the thin air to be picked up by a microphone?” The students designed a Tie-Fighter from Star Wars (just for fun) and had the Star Wars theme playing on a loop. You can see the ball shaped speaker in the center of the video. They insulated the base so sound would not travel through the payload and be picked up by the microphone. It started out great, but unfortunately at about 42,000 feet it just got too cold (probably around -10F) and the batteries, which had lasted for 3 hours when they did a test in a school freezer at 15F, just quit. We edited together video from launch and then spliced in at about 8,000 feet and then just before the batteries died:
Another student payload took on the engineering task of releasing the “High Hopes” of the world. Students and others from around the world had submitted their high hopes for their school, community and the world through a Google Form or Twitter (about 1100 were submitted). The “Hopes” were printed out and cut out individually and placed in a payload students had designed to open about an hour into the mission. Again the batteries they had tested, and lasted for 5 hours at 15F, that ran the motor that would open up the payload to release the high hopes failed. Fortunately they had designed in a back-up system. When the balloon burst and the payloads fell to Earth at over 200 miles per hour (until the parachute slowed them down at lower altitude) a fin on the side of their payload caught the wind and pulled open a side of the payload and released the high hopes.
High Hopes release at about 95,000 feet
Here is video of the burst and high hopes release in slow motion:
After a flight we like to note what happens to the balloon on the way up. Note in the photo at the top of this post the 2000 gram balloon is probably about 6 – 8 feet across (we over-filled it a bit so it would go up fast and come down before it got too far up in the mountains and private property). When it burst it was just a bit bigger:
At launch the payloads almost cover up the balloon.
But just before burst at 95,000 feet … note any difference in balloon size? If so, why?
Here are some more photos taken up high:
Burst
Lake Tahoe on the left, Pyramid Lake on the right at 92,000 feet
Yerington, Nevada, from 90,000 feet. A wide angle setting on this camera and the movement from falling exaggerates the Earth’s curve in the photo.
We came very close to “catching” this one on the way down, but were thwarted when we lost cell service (so GPS as well) at a key point in the descent and missed it by about 2 minutes.
Plastic pollution in an ocean gyre. Some floats on the surface, but more floats beneath the surface.
I am part of a team that is facilitating the “NevadaEngineering Fellows Program” for 5th grade teachers in Nevada. The funding for the program came from the NevadaGovernor’s Office of Science Innovation & Technology. A major goal of the program is for teachers to learn how to design and build NGSS aligned STEM units with an emphasis on engineering, and to be able to evaluate the quality of units they find elsewhere.
The plastic pollution problem in our oceans has become catastrophic. Plastic never goes away it, just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces (micro plastics) that are ingested by sea life (and then us).
Chris Jordan http://www.parley.tv/updates/2016/3/17/chris-jordan-midway-message-from-gyre
We started by having the participating teachers experience a model unit we designed on removing plastic from the ocean. They spent all day on a Saturday in October learning the unit. Then we provided all the materials required for the teachers to take the unit back to their classrooms to do with their students. We visited every classroom to observe how things were going and to consult. The phenomena that kicked off the unit is the video below (there are many others to choose from BTW if you search the web). Teachers and students reported to us during our classroom visits how compelling watching and re-watching the video and making/sharing observations of what they saw and heard … really motivated them to want to take on this engineering challenge.
Here is a link to the unit plan.Kris Carroll did most of the heavy lifting on the unit design with plenty of help from Stacy Cohen, Tracey Gaffney and myself.
The graphic organizers referenced in the unit plan and some support materials:
Here is the materials list for making a plastic gyre for each group (although we substituted somewhat and some teachers added to it): Materials for gyre
BELOW: These are the plastic plant trays we provided:
But some teachers substituted with larger containers:
The trays of water were somewhat problematic in that they were small (so they could be utilized more easily in moving to and from student tables) and students struggled with scale. One big suggestion based on our experience, after the initial trial of their design, have a complete debrief that includes a discussion of size of both the plastic debris (which should be cut much smaller than you see here) but also that the devices students build need to be smaller than you see here as well. In addition discuss how the trays represent a tiny, tiny part of the ocean (students really struggled with understanding the size of oceans). Also we suggest after the initial experience have students brainstorm materials that they believe should be included in the materials they have available to build their plastic removal/gathering device – then gather them from the school and have students find things at home to bring in to provide themselves more options.
We had an all day class for the teachers after most of them had completed most of the unit. They all reported that they and their students were highly motivated by the experience (and we noted the same during our classroom visits). Next teachers are designing their own units to match up with their curriculum using this experience as a model. I really feel I’m sharing only a sliver of the potential for this lesson and how it went here, so feel free to ask questions in the comments.
So there is going to be a solar eclipse in the US … for those lucky enough to live in or travel to the path of totality it will get dark for a few minutes and for others they’ll see (using appropriate, SAFE glasses or other viewing device) the Moon cover part of the Sun.
So what? Why should we care much about an eclipse?
It’s a phenomena. “Natural phenomena are observable events that occur in the universe and that we can use our science knowledge to explain or predict. The goal of building knowledge in science is to develop general ideas, based on evidence, that can explain and predict phenomena.” From: Using Phenomena in NGSS-Designed Lessons and Units – This is a “MUST READ” (and its only 3 pages.)
For very young students an eclipse is a great way to build their observation skills (and “wonder” skills too) as well as a chance to explain what they saw and experienced … get them started verbalizing! Have them note that the Moon is out during the day and night whereas the Sun is only seen during the day. Have them note how bright the Sun is … it is dangerous bright!
For older students it is a great ABC’s of science (Activity Before Content) opportunity. Go out days before the eclipse and view the Sun with the glasses or viewer and discuss what is seen. Then observe the eclipse and discuss the different stages the Moon and Sun went through – have them draw it in a step-by-step fashion. After they observe can they model what just happened? How did that work? Why doesn’t that happen more often? Instead of just searching the internet for the answers give them sphere’s (styrofoam balls, tennis and ping pong balls…) and flashlights and see if they can recreate the phenomena in the classroom. Don’t front load how an eclipse works or the vocabulary of eclipses … have them figure it out with you facilitating as little as possible. Remember, an eclipse doesn’t happen every month so just having the spheres cast shadows on each other isn’t the entire explanation … what must be true about orbits for them to happen only intermittently? Have them read (and/or read aloud to them or with them) myths, legends and stories about what people have believed was happening (now that their interest has been aroused).
Why do scientists study eclipses? How do they predict when and where they will happen? What do they see and learn from them and why is that knowledge important to us? These are great questions for students to answer.
Ask a scientist … find a scientist/astronomer/expert that you can video-conference in … show him/her the students modeling what they think happens with their spheres and flashlights as well as asking questions and clarifying what they think they learned (more language skills). Ask the s scientist about how and why they became a scientist as well as about some of the cool things they have studied too.
