Fort Garrison in Space!
Information on the Fort Garrison Elementary School
CAN DO experiments on the NASA Space Shuttle
Fort Garrison Elementary School is participating in real scientific experiments being flown on NASA's Space Shuttle. This WWW page is designed to provide information on this Fort Garrison project.
The Space Shuttle that carried the marigold seeds from Fort Garrison
into space finally landed this past Saturday (12/7/96) after several
delays due to bad weather. We hope to receive our five vials (or test
tubes) of marigold seeds sometime in January.
Remember, only ONE of the vials went up into space. The four other
vials were kept on the Earth as "controls". All five vials contain
IDENTICAL marigold seeds and all will be returned for analysis by YOU.
The primary purpose of our experiment is to teach you about the
scientific method. The five vials have each been subjected to a
different environment.
This is a ``blind'' experiment, which means that you don't know ahead
of time which vial was in space, which vial was kept on Earth, which
vial was frozen, which vial was spun around, and which vial was
irradiated. Your job, as a scientist, is to collect data on the
marigold seeds after they are returned to Fort Garrison so that you can
try to figure out what effects space flight had on the seeds.
Besides the experiment on the recent Space Shuttle mission, Fort Garrison
is getting the opportunity to participate in another experiment. That's
why the second, third, and fourth grade classes were asked to
pick something else (besides marigold seeds) that they would like to send up into space. Here's what you chose:
These vials, which have already been collected, will be sent up
in a Space Shuttle that's expected to be launched in August of 1997.
So stay tuned for further developments!
Comments on this WWW page can be sent to Hal Weaver via e-mail at
weaver@ari.net .
Hal is a professional Planetary Astronomer and the father of Alex
Weaver, who is a second grader in Mrs. Blum's class at Fort Garrison.
One vial was sent up with the Space Shuttle and experienced ALL of
the different effects associated with space flight.
One vial was kept on Earth under ``normal'' conditions. There should be no
difference between these seeds and new seeds that you purchase from
the store.
One vial was kept on Earth but was placed in and out of a tub of
very cold liquid Nitrogen, in order to simulate the extremely cold
temperatures that will be experienced by the marigold seeds on the
shuttle.
One vial was kept on Earth but was subjected to exposure from gamma rays.
Gamma rays are a form of electromagnetic radiation, just like the light
that you see with your eyes, except more powerful. Living things that
are subjected to strong doses of gamma rays can undergo mutations, which
disrupt normal cell development.
One vial was kept on Earth but was put into a ``centrifuge'' machine that
spins around really fast. Spinning the vial in this way simulated the
strong forces experienced by the marigolds during their lift-off aboard
the space shuttle. (Remember how it feels when you played on a fast
merry-go-round?)
The SECOND graders filled five vials with SPICE.
The THIRD graders filled five vials with JELLO GELATIN.
And the FOURTH graders filled five vials with POPCORN seeds.
For the latest Space Shuttle information, you can go to the
Space Shuttle Status homepage .
For specific information on the CAN DO experiments, please check out the
Get Away Special CAN homepage .
