Mon, Sep 13, 2010
North Carolina High School Team Claims The Top Prize
NASA has selected the winner of the national Balloonsat High
Altitude Flight Competition, a contest that introduces high school
students to engineering principles and encourages engineering
practices. The high school team from North Carolina School of
Science and Mathematics in Durham, NC, took home the top prize.
The winning team's experiment, "Variations in Polyvinyl Alcohol
Radiation Shields," was one of four student team experiments
launched May 26 on a NASA weather balloon to the near-space
environment of the stratosphere, an altitude of about 100,000 feet.
The experiment demonstrated radiation shielding with homegrown
polyvinyl alcohol films through a combination of ground tests and a
flight experiment. "We were impressed by the work of all the teams,
but especially this one," said David Snyder, technical lead for the
Balloonsat project at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
"This team won because they combined a variety of techniques and
information sources to look for radiation effects."
NASA will present a medallion to members of the winning team,
and the high school will receive a plaque this fall. The student
teams were judged on teamwork, presentations at Glenn's May 27
Balloonsat Symposium, and a final report submitted after the
experiments were launched on the weather balloon.
Other teams which had experiments launched were: Charlottesville
High School in Charlottesville, VA; Upper St. Clair High School in
Upper St. Clair, PA; and Stansbury High School in Stansbury,
UT.
The Balloonsat competition and similar education programs help
NASA attract and retain students in math, science, technology and
engineering disciplines critical to the agency's future missions.
Balloonsat is sponsored by the Educational Programs Office at
Glenn, the Ohio Space Grant Consortium, and Teaching from Space, a
program of the Education Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in
Houston.
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