The excitement was palpable at the Mishawaka Pilots Club airport in Elkhart County. A small group of students, professors and interested observers gathered to launch a balloon into the sky with a variety of scientific devices attached.
It was the culmination of a QuarkNet project involving the University of Notre Dame, Indiana University South Bend, and area high schools. QuarkNet is a national program that partners high school science teachers and students with physicists working on experiments. A main goal of the summer internship is to get high school students interested in scientific research.
“We got to build some circuit boards and data loggers, which is a super opportunity, and we’ve also been learning how to program them and explore different ways to utilize them,” said Mia Bradley, an incoming senior at Lakeshore High School in southwest Michigan.
Bradley has also been involved in a tree canopy research project IU South Bend is doing with the city of South Bend.
IU South Bend physics professor Dr. Brian Davis said the students attend lab meetings and help develop and test tools and processes.
“There’s a real divergence between how you teach in the classroom and how things get done the real world. This is a chance for them to see some of that behind the scenes,” Davis said. “In the classroom, we give them structured problems and we know the solutions. That’s not what lab work is like. Quite often you’re saying, ‘I don’t know how to learn that. I don’t know if I have the tools to do that or if I can develop those tools.’”
IU South Bend physics professor Dr. Ilan Levin said the experiments launched during this mission were designed to take measurements in the atmosphere.
“We have sensors on there to measure pollutants from things like automobiles and we track the concentration of these gases at different levels of the atmosphere,” he said. “We’re doing particulate counts. Indiana has a lot of coal fired power plants, so we’re looking at things like particulates in the air as a function of height.”
The program has sparked an increased interest in science for Sorel Miller, an incoming senior at Bethany Christian School in Goshen.
“I knew it would be a great experience to learn more about science. Since my school doesn’t have as many opportunities for things like this, it’s definitely helpful to go out of your way during summer or breaks to get into extracurriculars,” she said. “It really helps with college applications and shows you what the college experience might be like.”
Like Bradley, Miller has been working on other research project through IU South Bend, studying ways to reduce shark bycatch in ocean waters.
In addition to getting hands-on experience and learning opportunities with college professors, the high school students are also interacting with the college students involved in the project.
Nicholas Good is an incoming senior physics major at IU South Bend. He said the project was learning experience for everyone involved. Good said they did shakedown tests in freezers in the biology lab to conceptualize the project and find solutions to work around problems.
“That’s the fun part of it all. You try to get ahead of all the problems which you are never going to see coming,” he said.
The team encountered problems in the moments before the launch, making last minute adjustments to various pieces of equipment. Once the balloon was launched, the team determined the tracking beacon was not broadcasting a signal for the first hour of the flight.
Once the GPS turned on, they were able to track the equipment, which soared to about 66,000 feet, to its landing location south of Angola, Indiana, just east of I-69. Davis said the equipment recorded data during the entire ascent and descent. The payload survived pressures that were close to a vacuum (less than 5% the air pressure at the surface) and temperatures as low as -61 degrees Fahrenheit. As the balloon fell back to earth it was travelling as fast as 50 miles an hour but was slowed to 14 mph by a parachute before hitting the ground.
More launches are planned. The team will use data from the inaugural launch to fix any issues encountered. A future launch will be a combined project of the St. Joseph High School physics club and the IU South Bend physics club during the fall semester. It will include student payloads which could not be flown on this flight.
Zach Groshans is a recent IU South Bend graduate with a degree in physics. He hopes the high school students take advantage of the opportunities the internship is providing.
“I never knew about opportunities like this in high school. It would have been great to work on something like this that matters. I think it’s important to recruit and encourage that next generation of scientists. If you can get younger people excited about science, they’ll see it’s challenging and difficult but very rewarding,” he said.
Good said science is as much a pursuit of finding answers as it is finding new, interesting questions.
“Having research experience is something that IUSB really goes out of their way to provide for their students. They do their best to make sure that we have the most interesting and high-level opportunities. It’s something that can really bolster your résumé.”
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