Ballooning-Related Curriculum and Activities for Non-Science Majors
Hi everybody,
I'm teaching a course for non-science majors at the moment which includes a balloon launch toward the end of the quarter (May 23). I'm having the students work in teams of 3-4 to design their own experiments for the flight. Ideally, I would like them to work as independently as possible, and not tell them what they should build, other then giving them weight and size limits, and a $50 budget. Does anybody have any favorite curriculum, readings, activities etc. that would help the students learn and think about the conditions and processes in the troposphere, tropopause, and stratosphere, and help them come up with ideas for their own experiments? I'd be interested in any ideas experiences from both the instructor and students who have already been involved in similar project.
Cheers,
Bernhard
I'm teaching a course for non-science majors at the moment which includes a balloon launch toward the end of the quarter (May 23). I'm having the students work in teams of 3-4 to design their own experiments for the flight. Ideally, I would like them to work as independently as possible, and not tell them what they should build, other then giving them weight and size limits, and a $50 budget. Does anybody have any favorite curriculum, readings, activities etc. that would help the students learn and think about the conditions and processes in the troposphere, tropopause, and stratosphere, and help them come up with ideas for their own experiments? I'd be interested in any ideas experiences from both the instructor and students who have already been involved in similar project.
Cheers,
Bernhard
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Howard Brooks on -
Dear Bernhard,
Sorry to take so long to give you feedback. Paul Verhage has written an e-book on Near Space Exploration and has discussed several balloon related projects in his NUTS and VOLTS columns. Parallax has links to some of this material on their website: http://www.parallax.com/tabid/567/Default.aspx
More information can be found at www.nutsvolts.com
Students also develop interesting projects when they consider the near space environment - low temperature and decreasing pressure.
The seasonal variation of the altitude of the tropopause is a simple project that requires flights throughout the year.
Two amateur radio groups that frequently fly student experiments are:
Edge of Space Science (www.eoss.org) which does not give much detail about flight payloads, but identifies their customers.
and
Arizona Near Space Research (www.ansr.org) Unfortunately, much of the information from ANSR was linked through an individual's website, Michael Gray, who was killed by a drunk driver while riding a bicycle on Easter Sunday. Hopefully more of that information will be reposted in the future.
Howard
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