Science Edumacation

Yellow Ledbetter and the Lt. Governor

2012-02-14T17:37:00.000-05:00

The Lt. Gov. of NJ, Kim Guadagno, visited the lab yesterday to talk about economic development in the state and learn about what's going on at the lab. I had the chance to talk to her for a bit about science education, workforce development, and using plasmas as a teaching tool. Of course I had to fire up our plasma speaker as the attention-grabber. Lately I've been playing Pearl Jam, I have no idea what the lyrics are but it sounds great. The full story is now on the university web site, written by PPPL's Patti Wieser and with a photo by Elle Starkman. I wasn't bored...or asleep..., just listening....intently!

Here's a link to the story.

2012 looks a lot like 2011

2012-02-12T12:26:00.000-05:00

...and that's a good thing in my book.

Steph, Aliya, and Deedee continue to strengthen and expand our programs. We're in the middle of the Science on Saturday lecture series, 27 years in a row with record crowds. The middle and high school science bowl competitions are coming up, followed by an expanded Young Women's Conference. We are getting ready to select undergraduates for the NUF, SULI, and Community College summer internships. The GPIC Hub is starting its second year and I'm concentrating on developing the future workforce (K-12). We've added new teams for our partnership with NASA that will fly experiments in July. Steph and Aliya are working with Trenton High School students on a microgravity experiment. We are developing a couple of new research areas, one in plasma speakers, the other in atmospheric plasmas. The semester just started and I'm teaching a writing seminar. Finally, the US 1 newspaper wrote a story on both the Art of Science competition and me.

Looks like a great year....stay tuned!

Winter, 2011 Update

2011-12-08T11:14:00.001-05:00

2011 Art of Science competition First Prize

2011 may be winding down but it seems like things are as fun, as varied, and as busy as normal. The Sustainability Workshop high school is doing well and the Philadelphia Inquirer just ran a front-page article on the school and the school founder, Simon Hauger, recently gave a talk on the school at PopTech. The 2011 Art of Science competition was a huge success, we received press coverage around the world, including a slide show at the New York Times. The winning image. while not a photo of a plasma, is from a post-doc affiliated at PPPL and so that means that of the five competitions, PPPL people have won three. The physical gallery opened on 11/11/11 in the Friend Center on campus and I had the pleasure of lecturing to a group of K-12 superintendents, principals, and supervisors on the intersection of art and science and the use of images like this to communicate with the general public on scientific topics. The entire Science Education staff spent a week in Salt Lake City at the American Physical Society's Division of Plasma Physics meeting where 1,500 plasma physicists from around the world shared the latest results. We presented our own work on our partnership with NASA, our efforts to recruit young women into careers in science, and our study of the effectiveness of our programs. For example, since 2000, 72% of our undergraduate interns have gone on to a graduate school in a science, engineering, or technical field. Of those, 44% are studying plasma physics. And finally, I completed my machine shop course. One drill indicator, one plumb bob, and one fly cutter, priceless.

I Dare You to Try It! (2011 Version)

2011-10-26T17:06:00.004-04:00

More than 11 years ago, I wrote an essay called "I Dare You to Try It," about my new career as a science educator. I'm normally a fairly slow writer, but I vividly remember where I was when I sat down at the computer to write it and how the entire essay just flowed out of me. During the past few weeks, I keep on coming back to that piece and I think it is because I've been doing such a wide variety of activities and they are the type of activities that I like to say give me the "fuel" I need to do what I do. So here's the updated version of my old essay.

_________________________________________________
How would you like a job where you are given the freedom to use your imagination, your creativity, and your scientific training to the fullest? How would you like a job where you feel that you are making a difference? How would you like a job that makes you feel that in a small but significant way you are changing lives? Who wouldn't like a job like that and do you even call it a "job" or "work" if it does all of that and more? Yet that's how I describe mine.

How would you like a job where Monday you are attending the ribbon-cutting of an innovative new high school, Tuesday you are chatting with the Commander of the final space shuttle mission, Wednesday you are organizing the Art of Science Competition and then taking a metal-working class, Thursday you are leading a professional development workshop for K-12 science teachers on the scientific method, and Friday you are the guest scientist in a second grade class talking about energy? Yum, that's a tasty week and welcome to the world of science education.

Turning sunlight into energy with a solar-powered car.

The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma...

This was taken at the ribbon-cutting ceremony
but I've been feeling a lot of this lately.
(Photo courtesy of The Sustainability Workshop)

I get into the lab less and less and I miss it. But vacuum pumps still don't smile and power supplies still don't say "Ah, ha!" Working with students and teachers is even more rewarding than it was 11 years ago. You don't have to do it formally like I do but you can if you are about to graduate with your PhD or Ed.D. Or you can start by simply calling up your local elementary school and offering to bring in some of your "toys" for an hour. Go ahead, I dare you to try it. You'll never, ever regret it.

Wonderful video on The Sustainability Workshop

2011-10-25T18:34:00.001-04:00

Pop!Tech created a new video on the school down at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. It's excellent and worth your time. Here's the link: The Sustainability Workshop

Microgravity - The Video!

2011-10-03T18:34:00.000-04:00

Aliya Merali, one of the newer members of the Science Education Department and a veteran of four microgravity flights, put together a five minute video of our experience preparing for our week flying in microgravity. It is an awesome video and well worth a look. Here's the link to the video:

http://clouds.pppl.gov/photo-links

Failure is an Option - Student Version

2011-09-22T13:13:00.000-04:00

It isn't called the Navy Yard for nothing!

Yesterday, I had a chance to head down to the Philadelphia Navy Yard and sit down with the students of The Sustainability Workshop to talk about what makes a successful research project. I was asked to tell them about a "cool" project that I managed and what it took to make it a success. Hmmmm, what to choose? How about something that involved multiple people, complicated logistics, difficult experimental challenges, and maybe even "fun." Oh, wait, I got it, that thing with NASA, you know, K-12 teachers working intensely for months on a common goal that ended with us floating through the air!

So I showed the students our 5 minute video (thanks Aliya!) and let the questions fly. "How does that work?" "What happens to gravity?" "How can I do that?" "Cool!"

If high school students can build this car as part of an after school club, imagine what they can do if they have a school devoted to real-world projects.

What was immediately clear to me was that this was an amazing group of students, enthusiastic, engaged with the topic, ready to get to work, and fun. (there's that pesky word again) So we talked about how the airplane simulates microgravity ("Imagine a football thrown from Michael Vick to DeShawn Jackson for a touchdown and the path the football takes. Now imagine you are inside that football and you are holding a pen and you let that pen go. As you both travel inside that football and the football is in free fall, it appears that the pen is floating. Get it?"). And we talked about some of the experiments such as water splashing in microgravity (One of the students compared it to blood splashing in a CSI-Miami episode. It made sense at the time!) or a pendulum stopping as gravity went to zero ("you have to see it to believe it!").

Then our conversation headed towards the fact that a regular school, a normal school, does not accept failure. Grades, GPA, SAT scores, quizes, tests, and so on are how students are measured and there is no room for mistakes. But their school, with the curriculum centered on real-world research projects, not only allow mistakes but actually requires failure. (Just like life, according to one of the students. Told you they were wise...) We talked about how a good research project can only succeed if there is room for mistakes. And if you don't fail, your project is too simple and probably not very interesting. From there we headed to the main idea, that the hard part is not getting frustrated when you fail or to not cut corners when you are under a time constraint. Instead, you must be open to the failure, and learning from it. The students got that instantly, and embraced it. Wow.

Simon Hauger, Lead Teacher of the school,
Principal, and the driving force (pun intended).

The hour flew by and as we wrapped it up one of the students said, "Now that wasn't boring, I didn't fall asleep!"

I couldn't think of a better compliment.

(Thanks to Nick Guilbert, Director of Sustainability at The Peddie School for the photographs.)

Watching dreams come true

2011-08-24T08:02:00.001-04:00

Nearly ten years of planning and a dream becomes a reality. The Sustainability Workshop, an alternative high school in Philadelphia, begins classes in September. Yesterday was an open house for students and their families. My role is small, but wonderfully satisfying.

What is the Sustainability Workshop? It's best to let the people that created it describe it:

"Inner city students and award-winning cars. What do they have in common? Ground breaking education that works.

13 years ago, Simon Hauger founded the EVX Team, an after-school program that builds and competes with alternative fuel vehicles. The team has won national titles, gotten a ton of press and has even attracted the attention of the President of the United States.

More important than the cars we’ve built and the attention we’ve attracted are the educational outcomes for the students. When students are given the opportunity to tackle real-world problems and learn the science and technology behind the cars they build, the results are amazing.

Our work lead us to envision what we could accomplish working with students for the entire school day rather than a few hours a week.

A partnership with the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster (GPIC) will let us do just that. On September 6, 2011, The Sustainability Workshop will open at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and we will be able to show the power of the educational model the EVX Team has used with such success.

The Workshop takes the core elements of EVX—real projects, hands-on learning, and close collaboration among teachers and students—and places them at the center of the school day. Utilizing this innovative educational approach, there is no limit to what students can accomplish.

The School District of Philadelphia will grant the students course credits equivalent to what they would receive attending their home high school for the year.

Drexel University will provide Workshop students with the opportunity to enroll in college courses at Drexel during the year.

The project has two major goals. First, the Workshop will prepare students to be successful either in college or a career related to green design and construction. Second, students at the Workshop will make real and tangible contributions to the work of GPIC partner organizations."

So how did GPIC get involved in the first place? It all started with that simple question of what would happen if you turned off gravity? (Click to read that blog post again.) That question led to the PPPL partnership with NASA and that partnership led to NASA inviting me to a conference in Orlando last November to meet with a variety of educational organizations that all collaborate in one way or the other with NASA. Coincidentally, this conference was after the announcement that we had been awarded the GPIC funding and, even more coincidentally, Simon Hauger was there with another colleague, Ann Cohen. During a break they came up to me and asked if we could talk about their idea of a new school. Two minutes after that, I told them I wanted to help make it a reality because that's all it took to understand what a wonderful idea this is.

That's how it started. A two minute conversation that stuck with me and stuck hard. Simon and Ann sent me a proposal for how their school would align with the activities of the GPIC. We met at Princeton to go over the details. I met with the GPIC Education and Workforce team to discuss the proposal. Simon and his team met with John Grady and Will Agate of PIDC (the organization that runs the Navy Yard) to see if housing a school was even a possibility. I started feeling like we just might be able to get the school started when I heard that PIDC had been approached several times before about housing a school and had turned them all down -- until now. And coincidentally (ok, after a while these can't all be simple coincidences) a building called Quarters A was available and it was the perfect size and in great condition.

Simon negotiated a lease with PIDC. I approached the GPIC operating committee (OC) with a proposal to not only provide the real-world project focus of the curriculum, but to also provide some of the funding to get the school off the ground. The OC, in turn, asked to meet with Simon and his team, teacher Michael Clapper and evaluator Matt Riggan. What was scheduled for 20 minutes ran to nearly 90 with the final outcome being that the OC gave its unanimous and enthusiastic support.

And then came yesterday. The school is starting off small, just thirty seniors and it will slowly start expanding next year. The students and their families came to tour Quarters A, meet each other, and have a barbecue. I talked to some of the students and parents and heard the same thing over and over.

This is exciting.

This will open doors.

This is what school is supposed to be.

This is where I need to be.

This is the future of education.

Wow.

My daughter was with me, she's about to start middle school and she said she wanted to go to school here. If I was in high school, so would I.

A wonderful story about the NASA collaboration

2011-08-16T23:33:00.000-04:00

Patti Wieser wrote a wonderful story about our week in Houston and it is featured on the Princeton University web page. Here's the link:

Story on our NASA collaboration from the Princeton University web site

How do you measure success?

2011-08-12T12:47:00.001-04:00

You can measure success in two ways, you can ask people what they think and you can observe what they do. We plan to go into the classrooms to see how the data collected during the week is used by teachers, but for now we have the anecdotal evidence. I simply asked people to write anything they wanted about their experience. Here are some of my favorites.

Believe it or not, experimenting, flying, floating, and bouncing around in Zero-G was not the MEMORY of the entire 10 day trip… Having the opportunity to attend this professional development in Houston has been the most fulfilling, applicable, professionally stimulating developmental program I have been involved with since being a K-8 educator.

The idea of bringing a group of people together in a "strange land", having them work together on something meaningful, watching them play together and bond, and seeing their excitement at the lessons they now have to share was priceless to witness.

This was a dream come true! From the day we arrived for our badges, to orientation to sharing our challenges with other teams—everything was completely surreal. I look back at the opportunities I was given during the ten-day program and cannot wait to share them with my students.

The entire week was a roller coaster ride, for me anyway, with extreme highs and lows that was one of the most intense learning experiences I have ever gone through. The PDs gave me great information and ideas that got me excited about bringing all of this home to my kids at school.

I am definitely a better teacher because of PPPL and the NASA program. The 11 minutes of microgravity solidified the experience BUT it was the 3 months of interaction with the team and program where I gained a new perspective on teaching.

This was a life changing experience! There are few things that happen to people that make them see the world differently and with more clarity but working with such an outstanding and diverse team in the Zero G Men on the NASA facility and G Force One did just that!

The professional development programs that you implemented for us was great. In Union City, we have these exact PD sessions, but to share with other schools from all around the country was a great experience, and fun! (I always tell my kids physics is phun, but they don't believe it... they will though!)

The week of July 21st through 29th simply qualifies as one of the best weeks I have ever had. The professional development conference... Awesome.

What I'll always most remember about these events is the shared experience of passion for science, education, and others that I received from my team members, fellow scientists, and educators. We all got into science for the passion we have for understanding the universe and for the hope we can use our knowledge to help the collective society. We all became educators to help others. The future impact of this experience on the many future students will no doubt be an even more interesting set of events to witness and experience than last week!

What I didn’t realize was that we were using the experimental design process, because I don’t teach it the way I was now using it. I am so used to being ridged, using each step in order. But I really was using the design process. How different I will teach it now. John DeLooper, our mentor, was a great leader.

One of the most powerful learning experiences I had all week was least expected. I learned the importance (critical) of clear, frequent and informed communication. The RGO Team masterfully communicated with each other and with us about schedules, expectations and everything else. They were models of teamwork. I am committed to modeling this for my students.

All my Life is a Parabola

2011-08-05T07:34:00.000-04:00

I'm exhausted.

That's the first thing that pops into my head as I think back about last week. When we got back, I asked each participant to reflect on their own personal journey and share it with me. What I got back was always inspiring and sometimes quite profound. Patty with a "y" sent me a note saying it was my turn and that seems fair. So here goes.

Harry Chapin was a great songwriter and singer that died too young. He wrote songs about his life, his family, his friends, and one of my favorites is "Circle," with the line,

All my life's a circle;
Sunrise and sundown;
Moon rolls thru the nighttime;
Till the daybreak comes around.
All my life's a circle;
But I can't tell you why;
Season's spinning round again;
The years keep rollin' by.

If you don't know the song, here's a link to a video of him singing it. "Circle," by Harry Chapin

The "circle of life" is certainly true. (Now I've got Elton John's "Circle of Life," from the Lion King stuck in my head) But, after last week, the wonderful imagery that Chapin creates in his song seems wrong to me. In the biggest sense of the word, life may be a circle, but on a smaller scale, life is a parabola with all of its ups and downs. The problem is that if I said to someone today, "All my life is a parabola!" they would have no idea about what I meant. For that, I blame Harry Chapin and all of the songwriters out there. I mean, what the hell rhymes with "parabola?"

So here are all the ups and downs from my week.

STS-135 Crew Return - up
Professional development workshop - up
Sailing - up
Test Readiness Safety Review - up
Day 1 flight - up
Everything breaking during Day 1 flight - up
Fixing everything before Day 2 flight - up
Day 2 flight - up
Unloading the first experiments and loading the next batch - up
Day 3 morning flight - up
Lunch spent fixing everything from the morning flight - up
Day 3 afternoon flight - up
Last day presentations - up
Watching teams work harder than they ever had - up
The looks of wonder and joy as people around me floated - priceless

Hmmmm, all "up" so far, here are a few "downs."

The evening after my first flight because I took too high of a dose of the anti-nausea medicine - down
The bruise on my hip from when I landed on the accelerometer box at 1.8g - down
The flight home, one long boring flight at precisely 1g - down
Trying to catch up on all the email when I got home - down (but almost done)

That's it. Been back three days and each day I'm slowly catching up on my sleep, getting back into the swing of things in the lab, working on my budgets, planning the classroom evaluation portion of last week, and getting ready for our Fall activities.

Best I can tell, it's all pointing back up again.

More Photos from the First Flight

2011-08-05T06:21:00.001-04:00

Here are some more photos from the Wednesday flight. (All photos courtesy of NASA)

Boarding the plane

Team Philly around their experiment to study an internal combustion engine in a varying gravitational field

The Space Cowboys and their experiment to study bubble dynamics and a pendulum in a varying gravitational field

The Zero-g Men team and their experiment to look at non-Newtonian fluids in a varying gravitational field

Big Jersey hair in microgravity (well 2 out of 3)

Push ups in lunar gravity

Landed and headed to the group photo

Group photo

Some of the NASA leadership team. The head of the Microgravity Education Office, Doug Goforth, is 2nd from the right

Photos!

2011-08-02T10:10:00.000-04:00

NASA has started to release their photos from our flights. I'll post a bunch once everything is available later this week. For now, here's my current favorite. That's the "Space Cowbows" team and they appointed me one of the "sheriffs." Looks like I'm riding in on my invisible sideways horse...

Howdy Pardners

Friday, July 29 - Time to say goodbye

2011-07-30T23:19:00.001-04:00

It's our last day.

The week went by so quickly, in part because every day was action-packed, and in part because everyone was pumped up on adrenaline, speed, and inspiration. I have no idea how I can convey what a truly amazing week this was. But of course I'm going to try.

We ended our week where we started it, in a conference room overlooking the T-38 jets that NASA uses as trainers for the astronauts. This time, instead of an introductory orientation, each team was asked to creatively sum up their week. This was an opportunity for the teachers to share both the science and the wonder of their 11 weightless minutes (30 parabolas of approximately 22 seconds of 0g = 11 minutes total).

First up was the Space Cowboy team. They naturally led a campfire sing-a-long and convinced VIP/Astronaut/Educator Leland Melvin to not only join them but to wear Patty's cowboy(girl) hat.

Space Cowboys + special guest (all photos courtesy of Sheriff JDL)

Next up was the Jersey City team with a 5-minute movie, "Zero g-Men." It included a trailer for the movie created by team member Craig Lapierre.

Team Philly presenting their slideshow...

Team Princeton sang a song...

Team Auburn a movie...

And Team Trenton a rap...

Quite honestly, a photo could never do justice to the presentations. We laughed, we were touched by the emotions that the teams expressed, and I found myself getting a little misty. These presentations were my "fuel." Hearing how this experience had already changed people in such a positive and powerful way let me share in the joy that was pouring out of everyone. And, quite selfishly, I got to be a part of all six teams' emotional journey. As I write this, I still have all of those feelings wrapped around me and I don't want to let that go.

But we needed to say goodbye and pack up our equipment. I hand-waved a few closing remarks and we headed on over to the hangar.

There was one last thing to do before we could go.

Teams that have previously flown on the aircraft hang a banner in the rafters of the high bay next to the runway. Earlier in the week, Aliya took the new PPPL logo and gotten our own banner made and now everyone signed it. Before we could hang it, we needed one last picture. So I got on the public address system (never give me a microphone Sara!) and asked if everyone could gather by the plane. Cameras were pointed, we smiled and hugged, and *poof* it was over.

As we walked out the door, I told our friends from NASA that we'd be back again next year. I can't wait.

Thursday, July 28 - Two flights in one day + a dinner that couldn't be beat

2011-07-29T19:21:00.002-04:00

We arrive at Ellington Airfield at 7:30 am and find out that there will be two flights today - the regularly scheduled 9:30 am flight and a 2:30 pm flight. Tropical storm "Don" will be in the area on Friday and no one wants to be flying an airplane that dives up and dow 10,000 feet in the vicinity of it. That means that any problems with the three experiments will have to be fixed in a short amount of time. The teams all meet, work out an experimental plan that takes this into consideration, and get to work.

Those of us flying in the afternoon head onto the plane to get everything ready. The team from Princeton loads their crystal solution slowly and carefully in order to not prematurely trigger the chemical reaction that they will study. The Trenton team loads their water tank with ball bearings that they will shoot into the tank during the flight. The Auburn team sets up their computer and equipment for their equilibrium experiments. We have 45 minutes to get everything done and we need every moment. Before we know it, NASA calls out "time" and we get off the plane so it can go through a final check-out and the flyers can board.

Trenton, Auburn, and Princeton, along with Aliya, ready to board
the morning flight.

All systems are go, the flyers have taken their anti-nausea meds and line up to board the plane. As the plane takes off into clear and calm skies I realize that for the first time all week, I have nothing to do. It's a strange feeling, actually.

90 minutes later, the plane lands. All three experiments worked well and everyone had a spectacular time! Teams get ready for the afternoon flight and I put on my flight suit. The afternoon flight has two special guests, a staff member from the White House's Office of Science, Technology, and Policy (OSTP), and Leland Melvin, a former astronaut and the head of NASA's education programs. We take our meds, go through the pre-flight briefings, and are ready to go.

My afternoon flight as seen from the Johnson Space Center (photo courtesy of Up and At 'Em Cohen)

I cut my anti-nausea dose by 50% because I was too tired for too long yesterday and I'm sure the lower dose will keep me feeling good during the flight. On board, I sat next to a journalist from the technology blog "Boing Boing" who is writing a story on our Trenton team. One we began the parabolas, I helped out where I could and spent the rest of the time floating. It was wonderful to see how much control Leland had in zero-g. All his time in space meant that he could move around the cabin with ease and confidence. Everyone got really good data that they will analyze when they get back. Here's a video from my phone. Starting in 1.8g, I point the phone around the plane and wait until we reach 0-g before I let go, directing it towards one of the teachers on the other side of the plane. The phone spins around so it is difficult to tell but it glides over to her and she passes it back. We do our 32 parabolas and head back to the airfield. Everything went smoothly.

In the evening, I had dinner with the VIPs and the education leadership team from Johnson Space Center at an Italian restaurant overlooking the water. It was a wonderful day.

Wednesday, July 27 - My turn to fly

2011-07-28T07:41:00.001-04:00

Some people call them the Space Cowboys...

Today is the second day of parabolas for the first three experiments and I will join them. Like yesterday, we will do 30 in microgravity, 1 lunar, and 1 Martian. Before take off, I checked on the engine from the Philadelphia team. It is cleared to fly and getting loaded on the plane. Everything looks good so we go to our pre-flight briefing, take our meds, and get ready to board.

This will be my third flight and, even thought I felt good previous times, I can't help but be just a little bit nervous. As I take my seat, I'm surrounded by the teachers and their excitement is palpable and contagious. We laugh, smile, and take off into a clear blue sky.

The first parabola is always my favorite. The airplane is flying level and then it pulls up hard and you are driven down into the cushions on the floor (the walls and ceilings are also padded). As the plane begins to turn over the top of the parabola, the weight on your relaxes and then, like magic, you float to the ceiling.

I was sitting next to the "Space Cowboy" team (John, Allison, Darrell), our journalist Patti, and the alternate from the Trenton team, Bocary. The looks of wonder, of amazement, of joy on their faces were so beautiful that I felt myself smiling and laughing.

As the parabolas progressed, I floated over to check on our other two teams. Team Philly (Paul, Matt, Ron) felt great and had recorded the spark from the spark plug from two parabolas but they were shut down. The pilots reported that they could feel the vibrations of the engine starter in the cockpit and requested that the team stop the experiment.

The Jersey City team (Jose, Chris, Fred) also felt great and their experiment with oobleck was working well. Right next to them, a team of teachers from a different program were cracking eggs in microgravity and I had to take a look. So I floated over to them and grabbed onto their glovebox so I could peer inside. The egg was floating as a perfect sphere, yolk and all. It was ridiculously beautiful to see that. As the call for "feet down" came out, the teacher running the experiment held a piece of tupperware under the egg and it dropped down into it, and he snapped on the lid. Wow.

The rest of the parabolas were wonderful. The Space Cowboys got good data with their bubbles and with their pendulum/spring setup. Highlights for me included passing a tennis ball around and watching it float, Bocary and I even pretended it was a soccer ball and passed it back and forth with our heads. For one parabola, I strapped my feet down and grabbed onto John and Allison so it would look like I was lifting them over my head. I also looked out the window and saw the horizon at 45 degrees. It was beautiful.

When we got back down to the ground, we took a group photo, did our post-flight briefing and then got ready to unload the experiments that were on the plane to prepare for the next teams. Next up are the teams from Trenton, Princeton, and Auburn, Alabama. Their experiments were loaded into gloveboxes and attached to the floor of the plane.

The schedule currently has one flight Thursday, one on Friday. Tropical storm "Don" is headed our way, however, and we are going to try to get both flights done tomorrow. Friday's weather does not look good and the next chance of flying after that is Monday, after we plan to return home.

Stay tuned...

Here are some photos, courtesy of John's camera

Some people call them the Gangsters of Love...

Patti and I post-flight

Ron and Paul heading to the plane

John and Bocary

Jose and Fred

Allison and Patti after the flight

Ron and Matt

Thumbs up from me

Tuesday, July 26 - Failure is an Option

2011-07-27T07:13:00.002-04:00

In science, failure isn't simply an option, it's the normal state of affairs. Most experiments don't work at first and at second and at third. Instead, you have to make constant adjustments and changes until you get it right. That's typical when you do it in the 1-g environment of the Earth-bound laboratory.

On the Weightless Wonder, you have exactly two chances to get it right. Each experiment flies on two consecutive days with half the team flying on the first day, half on the second. If it's difficult to get an experiment to work the first time when you are on Earth, is there really any chance of getting it right inside an airplane with all of the safety requirements and the fact that you and your equipment are undergoing a constant and changing force as the airplane flies parabolas?

The answer is no...and yes.

NASA's motto is that "Failure is not an option." That's a powerful and critically important perspective when people are involved. So failure is not an option holds true for the pilots of the Weightless Wonder and the NASA personnel supporting us aboard the airplane. No one will get hurt.

Failure is an option for our experiments. Today, we planned to fly the first three experiments. That didn't happen.

The day began with a meeting aboard the aircraft to test the combustion engine to find out if it still leaked. The team bought the proper fitting, a NASA technician modified it so it would mate to the vent line of the airplane and it was time to turn it on. In the photo, three members of the team are on the left, NASA personnel on the right. The team fired up the engine and instantly the call came to turn it off, the smell of propane was obvious. A quick investigation found that the exhaust line was no longer leaking, the new fitting was good, but the intake valve and the engine seals were all leaking. There was no choice, the plane had to take off without this experiment. The forklift came out, the rig was unbolted from the floor of the plane, the hatch opened, and the engine went back into the hangar. I met with Doug (education) and Dom (flight director) and we quickly made a new plan. Ron, the auto tech. teacher would not fly today and work on the engine. Jayatri and Kathleen would fly as scheduled, but be assigned to other experiments. The team met to discuss the new plan and the plane was prepared for takeoff.

Everyone then met for the pre-flight briefing and to take the anti-nausea medicine. You take two pills, the scopolamine for nausea and an upper because scopolamine is a bit of a downer. Here is Aliya ("I'm good"), Kathleen (I'm good but I can't feel my legs"), and Adam (I'm good, I mean really good!) about 15 minutes after swallowing the magic pills.

Along with the three of them, our other flyers included Susan, Pat, Nick, Craig, Tony, Chelule, and Jayatri.

Jayatri, Susan, Pat, and Nick getting ready to board. Photo courtesy of John DeLooper.

Boarding the plane. Photo courtesy of John DeLooper.

Photo courtesy of John DeLooper.

While the plane went out over the Gulf of Mexico to fly 30 microgravity parabolas, 1 lunar, and 1 Martian, I went back to help the Philly team figure out what to do. It was clear that the engine could not fly without major modifications and those could not happen in 24 hours. The question was whether or not there was something else on the engine that could be studied and still be scientifically interesting and also relevant to the students. I suggested that the team study the spark behavior in a varying gravitational field. No fuel, but what happens to the spark in a spark plug at 0g? Or at 1.8 g? Or if it was on the Moon? Or on Mars? (Yes, I know, that's now a plasma physics experiment too!) The team had the camera set up, all they had to do was reposition it so that it could see the spark and convince NASA that this new experiment was safe. That took the rest of the day, but the team worked incredibly hard and the safety inspection was short because everyone was convinced that this new experiment could fly safely tomorrow!

In the middle of all of that, the flyers came back down to Earth though each of them was still floating. First off the plane was Pat, arms raised, soon followed by everyone else. Kathleen was beaming and just hugged me, smiles were everywhere, and the wonder and joy just burst out of people. Everyone that stayed on the ground cheered.

Photo courtesy of John DeLooper

What about the experiments? Of the other two, the oobleck did well and the team got some results. But oobleck leaked out of the chamber and some cleanup and resealing was required. The bubbles, spring, and pendulum all failed. The spring fell off, the bubble chamber floor didn't stay in place, and a camera mount broke. There was no data. A failure? Not at all. Instead, the experiment showed the team every weak point, every problem with moving from a 1-g to a zero-g environment, and they were all fixable. By the end of the day, the team had made the adjustments so the equipment was ready for the second day. Tomorrow, they are confident that the experiment will succeed.

Sometimes, failure is an option and it leads to success.

Monday July 25 - Test Readiness Review

2011-07-26T19:21:00.001-04:00

7:30 am and it's back to work.

Today is the Test Readiness Review (TRR) for all six experiments. If you're a PPPL'er, just think of it as a safety walk-through. For everyone else, just imagine you've worked on something for months and at the last moment you take it apart, ship it to Houston, rebuild it, and have about a dozen NASA engineers pour over it and decide if it is safe enough to put on an airplane that climbs to 32,000 feet and then drops about 8,000 feet before climbing again. (Remember the parabola trajectory from a previous post)

If you don't pass the TRR, you don't fly. From 7:30 - 10:30 am each team prepared, built, got everything ready. As the day started, I thought I'd have an easy day. I'm not attached to any particular team, my role is just to make sure everything works. Everything. How hard could that be???

Well...

The team from Trenton (water splashes in microgravity) borrowed my really fast video camera, my really fast and really expensive video camera. My $35,000 camera. The one that isn't working. At all. Even though it worked Sunday.

The team from Philadelphia (automobile engine in microgravity) is using propane instead of gasoline because it burns cooler. That's great, except it's leaking out of the engine. And they want to put their engine on the Vomit Comet. An enclosed environment that, in case you haven't figured out by now, flies these enormous parabolas that sometimes makes people sick. Every smell propane? How's that feel? Ok, there's also the small concern of a flammable gas leaking inside the aircraft. Might want to solve that.

But the other four teams are doing great. In fact, they passed their TRR and were approved to fly. The problem is that the Trenton and Philadelphia teams are scheduled to fly Tuesday. Tomorrow. Less than 24 hours.

So what should I do? I got on the phone with the company that sold me the fast camera and arranged for them to overnight a new power supply. Then I met with Doug, the head of the microgravity program and we moved Trenton to Thursday/Friday. So I asked Jersey City (oobleck in microgravity) if they would switch from Thursday/Friday to Tuesday/Wednesday. Their eyes opened wide and said, "YES."

That's one crisis solved.

For Philadelphia, the NASA engineers and technical experts swooped in (flew in?) and came up with a solution to plug the leak. No, it wasn't duct tape and cardboard like Apollo 13. It was new propane connections and some machining. All the team had to do was go to a local hardware store and buy the fittings. Then, first thing tomorrow morning, they could put it all together, test it, and hopefully fly.

Crisis averted but that took all day.

I'm exhausted, nothing to do now, so let's go bowling. A team competition, winning team all gets plasma mugs. Adam, Kathleen, Aliya, and I are the PPPL team. Lots of fun, bonding among teams, laughing, and bowling. I broke 100, we lost, the team from Trenton won. It was great.

Tuesday is a flight day.

Sunday, July 24 - Sailing

2011-07-26T18:37:00.001-04:00

Whenever I go on an adventure no matter how big or how small, I always hope it all works out. I never hope that it is "perfect" because it seems like that whenever I do, it isn't. But when I don't think about the outcome, and when the day's adventure is over and it is "perfect," that's when I smile, then laugh, and then realize it wasn't perfect, it was "magical."

Sunday was magical.

My day started in a house of worship, a Jehovah's Witness Hall. Now, if you ask, I'll label myself an atheist, or perhaps an atheist jew (whatever that means, or just ask my mother and she'll tell you) My only experience with Jehovah's Witnesses were probably like yours, a knock on the door and a request to come in, leave a magazine, and talk about religion. But Friday night, while sharing a spirit (not THE spirit, but A spirit, or perhaps a spirit or two...) with some of the teachers, the conversation turned to religion. I know the rule says don't talk politics or religion, but that's boring. Instead, we had this incredible talk about religion and our wide diversity of beliefs. Since one of us is a Jehovah's Witness, he invited the group to join him Sunday and I eagerly accepted the invitation. I may not believe in god, and I might tell you that I'm very angry at her (if you know me well, you know what I mean by that), but I'm open to understanding something that is new. So a couple of us went and it was really a wonderful experience. The service was about 45 minutes and the first thing I noticed was that there was a spectacular diversity around me. A diversity of age, of race, of ethnicity. In other words, my stereotype was just that, a superficial lack of knowledge. There was a prayer, a song, a sermon, and a closing song. The people I talked to were lovely and kind, just happy to see new faces. I left with a little more understanding of what it means to be a Jehovah's Witness and a smile.

Oh wait, this post is supposed to be about sailing....

After lunch, seven of us rented a sailboat. The Skipper, Gilligan, a millionaire, and his wife, a movie star, the professor, and Mary Ann. Oh wait, that's Tim, Darrell, Sophia, Patti, me, Bill, and Joy. Just call me Ginger for the rest of this post.

We rented a 26 foot sailboat and went out on the Galveston Bay. The weather was beautiful, the wind steady, the water warm. We spent about 5 hours (not a 3-hour tour) out, ate, swam, talked, and just took in the beauty. We got back at dinner time, hungry yet satisfied and smiling.

Like I said, the day was magical.

The Power of People

2011-07-26T08:20:00.000-04:00

It's amazing what happens when you bring a group of people together. On Saturday, our teacher-astronauts spent the day in our professional development workshop. We began a few minutes after 9am as I welcomed the group and then Sophia explained the agenda she had designed. The idea was that everyone had spent so much time preparing their experiments that there really hadn't been much time to think about how to bring the experiment, and the experience, back to the classroom. We began with a lecture by Prof. Ed Thomas of Auburn University, he is also mentoring a team from Alabama, on how the airplane actually achieves microgravity. Ed's lecture was excellent, even with the challenge of explaining this to a group that included elementary teachers through AP physics teachers. He explained that the plane does not "turn off" gravity, but is moving such that inside the plane it appears that there is no gravity. According to Ed, imagine being inside an elevator and the cable broke. (Note: do NOT try this at home!) As the elevator falls, with you inside it, you take a tennis ball out of your pocket and let it go. What happens? Since you and the tennis ball are falling at the exact same rate, if you let it go you will both continue falling at the same rate and so, relative to each other, the ball just floats in front of you. It looks like this:

Courtesy of Prof. Ed Thomas, Auburn University

Ok, so the plane does NOT do this. It doesn't dive down, or plunge, or anything else like that at all! Instead, imagine a quarterback throwing a football. The football follows a path that is more like an arc. You could call that path a parabola. And while the football is on that path, if a little ant took a little tennis ball out of her little pocket and let it go, what would happen? The exact same thing as what happened on the falling elevator, the ball would float! And that IS what the plane does. It follows a parabolic trajectory for about 25 seconds before it does dive down for a short period of time and then pulls back up to follow another parabolic trajectory. And everyone, and everything, on the plane feels the equivalent of zero gravity during this parabolic trajectory at the top and then feels about 1.8 times gravity when the plane does a similar parabolic trajectory as it begins to climb again. And if I weigh about 180 lbs on Earth, at the top of the trajectory I weigh nothing at all and at the bottom I weigh 1.8 times 180 = 324 lbs Do that 34 times in a row and you have the "Weightless Wonder."

Now it was time for the real work, bringing all of this back to the classroom. So each team spent about an hour brainstorming how they would bring their experiment back to their students. To add to the fun, we asked that each team create a poster explaining their ideas and handed out flip charts and markers. Then, everyone voted on the best presentation. The winning team each received a $20 certificate to the NASA gift store. That took us to the lunch break and when we returned, each teacher chose someone else's experiment that they also wanted to bring back to the classroom and we did the same thing. Everyone also wrote up their ideas into a preliminary lesson plan and we collected everything. When we get back, we will put everything online so that it will be available to all. We will also put all of the data online and the revised lesson plans so that everyone has access to everything. We ended past 4pm and it was an inspiring day. Here are photos of the winning teams (courtesy of John DeLooper)

Finally, after spending such an inspiring day with an incredible group of teachers, it's difficult not to reflect upon how much negative attention is given by some politicians and, from that, some of the public, towards a group of people that devote their lives to making our children better people. They do so because they love to teach, they do so because they love to inspire young people, and they do so because they, in turn, are inspired by their students. The poet, Taylor Mali, sums it up better than I could every hope to do. Watch this by clicking on the link. "What Teachers Make"

Houston is a great place to live, once you get used to sweating

2011-07-23T08:20:00.003-04:00

I was in hangar 990 at Ellington Field, waiting for the return of the STS-135 crew, talking to a woman next to me and melting. After a while, you can't help but talk about the temperature. As I looked around, I could tell she was right, everyone around me was glistening. I know that back home right now there is a heat wave engulfing the area, but this was a typical summer day in Houston, temperature in the high-90's and humid. And we were in a large, open airplane hangar with several thousand people all crowded together to greet the crew. My feet were aching, my PPPL polo shirt was clinging to me, people were bumping into me, and I was loving every moment. Any minute now, through a door about ten feet away from where I was standing, American heros were about to come out. Not the celebrities that so much of our culture idolizes, but four people that represented the true American spirit. When they did, the crowd roared, the astronauts waved, the music blared, and the emotions poured out of me. We were all there to celebrate their achievement and to celebrate the men and women that worked behind the scenes to make the very last shuttle mission a rousing success. Here is my video of their entrance.

The STS-135 Crew Return also had a different impact on me and everyone else today. Hangar 990 is the place where we spent the afternoon unpacking and building our experiments. Instead of three hours to work on each experiment, we had less than two. In that short amount of time, a crate needed to be unloaded, boxes unpacked, and six experiments set up. Once our hangar orientation was complete, teams sprung into action. Tables were covered in equipment, teams huddled together, building, preparing, and testing. Right before the lead NASA official announced that it was time to leave, the first team lowered their completed experiment into their glovebox. I looked around and saw that the other teams were not far behind. Then I met with the head of the Reduced Gravity Eduction Office, Doug Goforth, and his team to review the flight manifest. Teams were assigned a flight day, along with PPPL staff that is not part of a team. Our VIP, PPPL's Chief Operating Officer Adam Cohen, and our logistical crew chief, Kathleen Lukazik, are flying Tuesday, our journalist, Patti Wieser, on Friday. Aliya Merali will provide technical support to all the teams Tuesday and Thursday, I'll do the same Wednesday and Friday.

We'll be back Monday morning to complete everything and prepare for our final safety inspection before the first three experiments are loaded onto the aircraft. Tomorrow, we'll spend the day inside an air-conditioned conference room designing the curricula that each teacher will use in the classroom. But today, as we walked out of the hangar exhausted, it was impossible for me not to glance back over my shoulder, think about our day, and smile.

July 22, 2011 - Day 1

2011-07-22T07:02:00.001-04:00

Our group is scheduled to report the Ellington Airport (EFD) at 7:45 am this morning. EFD is 15 miles south of Houston and just a short distance from the Johnson Space Center. Originally created as a training facility during World War I, it is now home to a variety of aircraft including military and NASA. Besides the Vomit Comet, NASA also houses high-altitude aircraft, cargo aircraft, and the Shuttle Training Aircraft here.

This morning we get our badges and then an overview of the week. After that there is a 2-hour physiological training class followed by meetings for the team mentors and the team leads. Finally, right after lunch, there is time to take the experimental equipment out of the crates and get it ready for the flights next week. At 3:30 pm, we are invited to the STS-135 Crew Return. We don't know the details yet but, WOW! STS-135 landed successfully yesterday and was the last shuttle mission. Is the actual crew on the way here to say thank you to everyone at Johnson Space Center? We'll find out.

The experiments that are unloaded later today cover a variety of different topics. Each was chosen by the team members because it showed a clear need for microgravity and the results could be woven into each teacher's curriculum. I'll get more into the details of the experiments as the week progresses and only briefly list them now.

Team 1, with teachers from Ewing, Trenton, Matawan, South Brunswick, and The Peddie School, is looking at the behavior of bubbles in microgravity. They are also looking at the motion of a pendulum and a mass on a spring. Their mentor is PPPL's John DeLooper

Team 2, with teachers from Princeton, is studying crystal growth in a varying gravitational field. Their mentor is Sophia Gershman from Watchung Hills Regional High School.

Team 3, with teachers from Trenton, is filming water splashes caused by metal spheres with either a hydrophilic or hydrophobic coating. Their mentor is PPPL's Stephanie Wissel.

Team 4, with teachers from Auburn, AL, is studying equilibrium in a variety of ways including dropping a toy parachute and bubbles from antacid in water. Their mentor is Ed Thomas from Auburn University.

Team 5, with teachers from Philadelphia, is studying burn patterns, efficiency, and exhaust from a one-cylinder, plexiglass internal combustion engine. Their mentor is Simon Hauger from The Sustainability Workshop and West Philadelphia High School.

Team 6, with teachers from Jersey City, is studying complex fluid behavior in microgravity using oobleck (water and corn starch) and a speaker. Their mentor is Jose Lopez from St. Peter's College.

What Would Happen If You Turned Off Gravity?

2011-07-21T00:10:00.001-04:00

And away we go...!

Four years of dreaming, of planning, of wishful thinking all leads to tomorrow. Six teams of six educators plus two support staff, one journalist, one VIP, and myself are all headed to Houston tomorrow. We report to Ellington Airfield at 7:45 am Friday and the adventure begins. We unpack our experiments, hoping that everything arrived in the same condition that it was shipped, set everything up, test the experiments, and get ready for the flights that begin on Tuesday. But, before I get any further, let me take it back to the beginning.

It was the summer of 2007 and Mike Hvasta, a junior physics major from The College of New Jersey, was working in my lab on our dusty plasma experiment. Inside our vacuum chamber existed a cloud of dust, suspended in the background plasma due to a balance of forces, including gravity pulling the cloud down. Mike asked a simple question about the dust cloud, "What would happen if you turned off gravity?" We talked about it hypothetically but then I said to him, "Why don't you find out by applying to NASA's Microgravity University?" Mike took the bait, put together a team of students from TCNJ, wrote the proposal and sent it in. The proposal was accepted and the team worked diligently to prepare to fly a dusty plasma experiment aboard the Vomit Comet (I mean, "Weightless Wonder") in the summer of 2008.

The experiment was successful, thought it did have its moments of doubt. The wooden frame that held the experiment is now semi-famous with the folks at the Microgravity University because they tested its strength by having a fork-lift try to crush it. (If you ever meet Mike, just ask him about the details! He's now a PhD candidate in plasma physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.)

That October, I was in Washington, DC talking about PPPL's Science Education programs at the Department of Energy when I showed a video clip of one of the TCNJ team members doing summersaults with the help of a NASA crew member. At the break, someone comes up to me and says that he is on a short-term assignment to the DOE and he decided at the last minute to attend my talk and the NASA crew member is him. Talk about a small world! His name is Doug Goforth and he is the head of the Microgravity University.

That conversation led to a meeting to talk about a collaboration between NASA and DOE through our mutual education programs. In the summer of 2009, the team from TCNJ flew a modified version of their experiment and this time I went with them, flew for the first time, met again with Doug and the rest of his team, and started talking about a joint K-12 teacher program between us.

That's the program we piloted last year with two teams of teachers. That led to the Space Act Agreement that we signed earlier this year. The result is that we're spending the next 10 days flying the six experiments and we've added a professional development workshop on Saturday so that everyone will have time to write curricula to bring their experiments back to the classroom.

Just getting everyone out there took a tremendous amount of work. Thanks to Lynda, Deedee, and Kathleen for getting the people there and Jerry for shipping our equipment. Thanks to John and Bill in the machine shop for the custom parts and to Larry for the technical support. Thanks to Jackie and Connie and Tony for the financial accounting and to Rod and Ed for making sure the Space Act Agreement was in place and signed by everyone. Thanks to the NASA folks, especially Doug and Sara for all of their help. Thanks to John, Stephanie, Sophia, Simon, Jose, and Ed for leading the teams and thanks to all the teachers (and their students) for the tremendous amount of time and dedication it took in designing and building the experiments. Finally, thanks to Mike for being curious and for asking a simple question,

"What would happen if you turned off gravity?"

How hard can it be to get a VIP to fly on the Vomit Comet? You have no idea...

2011-07-02T13:20:00.003-04:00

As part of our collaboration with NASA, we were invited to fly two VIPs during our flight week and I was asked to suggest the people. Now that's my type of assignment. "Hey VIP, how would you like to spend about 11 minutes weightless on an airplane that is the world's greatest roller coaster with a bunch of teacher-leaders that are using the experience to inspire their students? Oh, all expenses paid." Or something like that. I mean, it's like handing out the world's greatest birthday present. Unless the idea of an airplane diving at a 45 degree angle from 34,000 ft. above the Gulf of Mexico is not your thing.

The first person I asked jumped at the chance. Adam Cohen is PPPL's Chief Operating Officer, a scientist, and a supporter of science education in every sense of that phrase. I sent him an email with the invitation and before I could blink the reply was in my inbox, a big YES.

I figured filling the second spot would be just as easy. The question was whom to ask? I settled on Congressman Rush Holt. He's the lab's representative in Congress, he is a former PPPL employee (Assistant Director), and he started the Science Education Program at PPPL. Perfect. So I called up his scheduler and she told me that he would love to go but....he has a stress fracture in his foot and is on crutches. Okay, that seems like a reasonable excuse, maybe I can get him to go next year.

So who next? Let me go big. Real big. She's a Princeton alumna, a passionate supporter of education, and I met her husband once (briefly). The FLOTUS, Michelle Obama. Just one problem, I don't know her telephone number. Or email. flotus@whitehouse.gov? michelle.obama@gmail.com? Nothing. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to even get an email address for her scheduler? Try googling that. Nothing. Go on the White House web page. Nothing. You have to really dig. But I eventually found it and sent off the invitation. Took a couple of weeks, but here's the reply.

Dear Mr. Zwicker,

Thank you again for inviting the First Lady to fly an experiment aboard NASA’s “Weightless Wonder”. Due to time constraints, the First Lady must decline the majority of the invitations she receives. We wanted to let you know that we have reviewed your invitation, and unfortunately, the First Lady will be unable to participate in your event.

The First Lady sends her best wishes and hopes that you continue to work with those close to you to strengthen your community and our country. Thank you again for your interest and understanding. Please keep us in mind for future events.

Sincerely,
The Scheduling Department of First Lady Michelle Obama

Please note that for each inquiry or invitation, the First Lady’s Office of Scheduling considers not only the stated request but also the possibility of additional forms of Presidential or White House involvement. This includes, but is not limited to, greetings, messages, proclamations, videos, and the attendance of the President, the Vice President, Dr. Jill Biden, or White House staff at an event or meeting. Replies to this email regarding additional or alternative requests or reconsideration cannot be answered.

Well, that was a long shot, I admit. Who next? Got it. I can't get the President's wife, let me try for the President....of Princeton University. Shirley Tilghman is her name and she is a remarkable person. A biologist by training and a current judge of the Art of Science competition that I co-organize, she would be perfect. So I sent off more or less the same invite one recent evening and got a reply back from her the next morning.

"Dear Andrew,
Thank you but....
Best Wishes,
Shirley"

Hmm, ok, this is getting harder. Let me give it one more try. Now who? I need a scientist. I need a teacher. I need an educator. Got it. Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's the Head of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC, he is the host of NOVA on public television, he's on The Colbert Report, he's a former post-doc at Princeton, and he and I were both elected Fellows of the American Physical Society in 2010 by the Forum on Physics and Society. Too many connections for him to turn me down.

Dear Mr. Zwicker: Thank you for your interest in Dr. Tyson. While he certainly appreciates your invitation he does not have the freedom of schedule to accommodate the request. I'm sorry.

He wishes you and your group the very best.

Regards,

Ok, now I'm getting a complex, starting to think it's me. C'mon people, it's an adventure of a lifetime and you're too busy????? Sigh. Oh, wait. They truly are very important people and incredibly busy. They probably get asked to fly on the vomit comet all the time. C'est la vie.

Bottom line is this.

We still have an open slot for any VIP that is reading this and just happens to be free the last week of July and can get to Houston. Of course if you truly are a VIP, you don't have the time to read this post and see that the invitation still stands....:)

Sorry Mr. Mayor, I'm not quite done speaking

2011-06-23T06:38:00.001-04:00

I had the pleasure of speaking in the Philadelphia city hall today, right before the mayor. It was a meeting of the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board (WIB) and Mayor Nutter and I were both there to speak. Each state has a WIB and they exist to direct funding to a variety of workforce development programs. For example, during today's meeting there was a vote to fund a program that prepares young people to enter the workforce. My talk was on my work with the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster for Energy Efficient Buildings and it potential impact on the workforce in the region. His talk was about a meeting at the White House, his role as Vice President for the Council of Mayors, and issues that effect Philadelphia and the country as a whole.

Philadelphia's city hall is simply spectacular, completed in 1901 it is the second tallest masonry building in the world. It has 700 rooms and is the largest municipal building in the US. The room we were in, Conversation Hall, had a spectacular chandelier and ceiling and while the acoustics were not ideal, the room was truly beautiful.

I talked for about 15 minutes on the GPIC HUB and gave an overview of our strategy to educate and create jobs around making commercial buildings more energy efficient. Our initial work centers around a 3-tiered auditing system that will identify the buildings best suited for an integrated energy efficient retrofit, determine the energy savings costs and the return-on-investment time, and aid in identifying the best path for financing the project.

Mayor Nutter opened his talk by remarking that at his first event he had spoken after a biologist and didn't understand everything she said. Now, at his second event, he was speaking after a physicist and didn't understand anything I said! (Big laugh) He then talked about his work with the Council of Mayors, his meeting with Vice President Biden and how the budget fights in Washington, DC were targeting workforce programs. He's a riveting speaking, dynamic yet personal and he gave a powerful presentation.

At the end of the meeting, I took off my GPIC hat, drove back to Princeton to put on my PPPL hat, and went to work on plasmas and to get ready for our microgravity flight. It was a good day.

Miguel Martinez was my hero

2011-06-17T16:35:00.002-04:00

Miguel A. Martinez of Kendall Park, NJ was born on September 28, 1919 and passed away on Thursday, March 17, 2011, he was 91. He worked at the Plasma Physics Lab starting in 1960 until his retirement in 1985 as an electronics technician. He was also my hero.

Miguel was not a physicist, he was not a science educator. Miguel was a soccer player and I first met him on the field. That's the only place I met him and that's the last place I ever saw him just this past winter when he was 91. That's right, Miguel played until just a few months before he died and he played when he was 70, 80, and 90 years old. Imagine that. I'm in my 40's and I just finished playing this afternoon and the first thing I did when I was done was take some ibuprofen. Miguel was just about twice my age and still played.

There has been a soccer game at PPPL since the early 1970's. Players come from all around the area Monday/Wednesday/Friday to play a game of pick-up soccer for an hour or so at lunch. Sometimes we play with as many as 10 to a side, other times as few as 3 to a side. The skill level varies, the point is to get some exercise and to have some fun. We play with small nets, no slide tackling, no set teams, just divide everyone up as equally as possible. The age level also varies. In the summer, high school interns join us along with undergraduates. Graduate students filter in and out through the years before they move on to new jobs. The rest of us work full time somewhere in the area. Artists, computer scientists, professors, and so on. Quite honestly, I have no idea what most of my fellow players do for a living. Miguel was the oldest and not by a few years. Our next oldest player just turned 60. That means that Miguel was 30 years older than the next player. 30 years!

By the time I started playing in the 1990's, Miguel was in his 70's and a goalie. By the time he was in his 80's I suppose you could say he started slowing down. We did put in the "Miguel Rules." No hard shots right at him and if he touched the ball it was considered a save. Even then, every once in a while Miguel would come out of the net and dribble up field. Sometimes he would even talk trash and let us know that he was bored with stopping the easy shots on goal. This continued into his 90s. My father is 89 and in reasonably good health for his age but he uses a walker to get around. I just can't get my mind around the fact that Miguel was older than my father and a soccer player. It truly is amazing.

Sometimes Miguel brought with him tomatoes from his garden, sometimes he brought a small flask of wine. But always he brought his grace, his humor, his gentile nature, and his incredible soccer skills. That's part of the reason why I considered him a hero. The rest was that he was a weekly example of how to live. Three times per week I got a chance to see the twinkle in his eye and I had a chance to do something with him that we both love. He never complained about getting old, he never complained about anything at all. He was there for the beauty of the game of soccer and for the beauty of the game of life. In a cultural where we idolize celebrity and wealth, Miguel had neither. Instead, for an hour or so, he simply was a reminder of what it means to truly live one's life to the fullest. I will miss him, but I will always remember him until the last time I lace on my own pair of soccer cleats.

I'm sure you can pick out Miguel, he was in his 80's when this photo was taken.

As the Space Shuttle Program Winds Down, Our Zero-g Teacher Program Gears Up!

2011-05-11T11:58:00.003-04:00

As I write this, Endeavor is scheduled to launch on Monday after a delay of several weeks. That will be the penultimate launch for the shuttles. (I love the word, "penultimate.") Simultaneously, our partnership with NASA is gearing up as we prepare to send K-12 teachers aboard the "Weightless Wonder."

Last year, if you recall, I took 2 teams of 5 teachers each to Houston to fly aboard the plane. One team studied whether hot air rises in microgravity (it doesn't!) and the other what happens to corn starch and water (known as "Oobleck") when gravity is constantly changing. Both experiments were a huge success and had a significant impact on both the teachers and their students. (You can read the blog posts from this trip here.)

In fact, Hope, a high school teacher featured in this photo said, This is an experience rivaled by none other. The students have the opportunity to see me as the scientist I have always wanted to be, and they can see that the journey towards our goal was as important as the data we collected. I plan on using this experience in all of my classes.

Since then, there has been plenty of activity around a new K-12 educator program for 2011-2013. Just last month we signed off on what is called a "Space Act Agreement" with NASA that formalizes our partnership. That allows us to bring up to 14 teams of teachers to Houston each year. Without the budget mess in DC, many of the other national laboratories would have sponsored teams with us, but cuts to teacher programs meant that we had to put the full contingent off for a year. Instead, we're bringing 6 teams, a total of 30 teachers plus 6 mentors, a VIP, and a journalist for a total of 38 people. These teachers represent school districts in South Brunswick, Trenton, Princeton, Ewing, Matawan, Watchung Hills, Jersey City, The Peddie School, Philadelphia, and Auburn, Alabama.

We leave for Houston on July 21 and return July 29. Currently, teams are finalizing their experiments, getting input from their students, and preparing the various safety documents required by NASA before the flight is approved. We're meeting weekly so stay tuned!

A Presidential Town Hall

2011-04-06T22:28:00.001-04:00

President Obama's town hall meeting today was at Gamesa Technology Corporation, a manufacturer of enormous wind turbines and the theme, quite naturally, was energy. He spoke for about 20 minutes on the importance of reducing our reliance on imported oil and then took questions from the audience. The questions ranged from the price of gas, to education, to importing oil from Canada. The President was his usual combination of eloquent, funny, and charming. I was a few rows back and raised by hand to ask a question but he didn't choose me. No hand shake this time, but a truly wonderful experience. Here's a short video clip from my phone of the President's entrance.

Finally, here's is a link of the C-span coverage of the entire town hall meeting. You can see my arm six seconds into it and the back of my head shows up a few times but no face time.

Have to go meet the President....AGAIN

2011-04-05T19:19:00.021-04:00

Got this email today. I think I really love my job.

__________________

to: "azwicker@pppl.gov"
date:Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 10:51 AM
subject: Philadelphia-area stakeholder for POTUS event

Andrew:

I hope you are well.

The White House asked me to nominate someone in the context of GPIC to participate in a town-hall meeting with the President. I nominated you and this was accepted. Below are the details. Please let me know if you have questions, and if you are able to attend.

_________________________________________________________________

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
President Obama to Hold Energy Town Hall in Philadelphia Area

WASHINGTON – On Wednesday, April 6, President Obama will travel to the Philadelphia area to discuss his long-term plan to protect consumers against rising oil prices and decrease oil imports as well as key components of his broader energy plan to diversify all of our energy sources, ensuring a cleaner, safer, and more secure energy future. The President will visit Gamesa Technology Corporation in Fairless Hills, where he will hold a town hall discussion with workers about building a 21st century clean energy economy to win the future. Gamesa's Fairless Hills wind-energy turbine manufacturing facility employs approximately 300 workers and was built at a former U.S. Steel industrial site.

I Dare You to Try It!

2011-04-04T12:58:00.000-04:00

I recently came across something I wrote more than ten years ago and was struck by how it has remained relevant today. I thought I would repost it here though you can still find it online.

(originally published in "Science Careers," from the journal Science. April 7, 2000)

How would you like a job where you are given a reasonable budget and the freedom to use your imagination, your creativity, AND your scientific training to the fullest? Who wouldn't, and that's how I describe mine. How would you like a job where Monday you are enticing first-graders with the wonders of scientific discovery, Tuesday you are working on a research project with an undergraduate summer student, Wednesday you are designing a cutting-edge interactive Web page, Thursday you are building Lego flywheel-powered cars to teach middle school science teachers the basics of rotation, and Friday you are putting the finishing touches on the 2-week workshop you created for high school teachers that helps them introduce contemporary scientific topics to their students? That's my job (though of course I work on all of those projects and more every single day). Welcome to the world of education and outreach.

I didn't plan it this way. I thought I was getting my Ph.D. in physics, then off to a few years of a postdoc, and finally to a standard research career. Whoops. There were signs along the way that I'd end up doing something nontraditional, but I couldn't see them. With hindsight, I realize now that it was perfectly obvious that I'd end up here. I just needed someone or something to open my eyes to this.

That someone showed up during the first year of my research postdoc. She was a junior at a large urban high school and I agreed to work with her for 8 weeks as part of the laboratory's Science Education Program. Noone told me that I would find the experience as enriching as she did. No one told me that it would profoundly change my career path.

Her project was to write a computer code to display data in real-time in the control room of a fusion energy reactor. I figured I'd quickly explain the project, hand her a manual or two and step out of the way. Yeah right.

She had never written a computer code before. She was bright, but she was far behind the other high school students working at the lab that summer. Her school was not providing her with the education she craved and she was literally starving for it. So we worked together on her code and her analytical skills in general. She soaked up knowledge like a sponge and it was so fulfilling to help her, to watch her go "Ah, ha!" By the end of the summer, she wrote the code and we used it well after that summer ended. My colleagues and I started taking it for granted, forgetting about when we didn't have this data displayed for us.

It would be a crime if she went back to her school. So I made some connections, made some phone calls, wrote some letters, and got her an interview at a private prep school. They were willing to accept her and even give her a full scholarship, but only if she was willing to repeat the 11th grade. That's a tough decision for a 16-year-old to make. But anyone that starving to learn has no choice. She left her school friends behind and became a boarding student. She struggled at first, really struggled. Then she almost made the honor role. Then she made it. She was on it every semester after that.

She got into a wonderful university. Pre-med. Again she struggled at first. Again she was on the dean's list a short time later. She was one of three students given an early acceptance to medical school during her junior year. Today, she is a second-year medical student on her way to becoming a doctor.

This young woman was going to succeed with or without me. But I had the opportunity to help her along her way. If I did nothing else in education, I knew I would always have this experience. I was hooked now. The feeling of opening a young person's eyes is addicting.

My grant money began to dry up soon after my first experience in the Science Education Program, and I bounced around from one project to another for the next 2 years. Overall funding was scarce, permanent research jobs were few. At this point, the young woman I worked with had just made it onto the dean's list for the first time and I wanted to let my friends in the Science Education Program know. Turns out they were just then looking for a scientist to work with them full time. I jumped at the chance without a moment's hesitation, never looking back. As it turns out, the drying up of my research grants was the best thing that could have happened.

Now I try to do a little bit of research when I can. I miss it some, too. But vacuum pumps don't smile. Power supplies don't say "Ah, ha!" Let me tell you, helping a student learn is one of the most rewarding things you could ever do with your scientific training. You don't have to do it formally like I do. Call up your local elementary school and offer to bring in some of your "toys" for an hour or so. Go ahead, I dare you. You'll never, ever regret it.

Watson's Creator Meets the Congressman that Beat It

2011-03-15T14:51:00.003-04:00

For the last 27 years, PPPL has hosted a series of Saturday morning public lectures for the general public on current scientific topics. We average more than 400 people every week ranging in age from 9 to 90. This year's topics ranged from neuroscience to robotics and the last lecture of the series was given by Dr. David Ferrucci, "An Overview of DEEPQA: How Watson Could Play Jeopardy."

Dr. Ferrucci led the team from IBM that created the Jeopardy-playing computer that recently took on the two best champions and beat them both. During his talk, he explained not only how Watson can answer a Jeopardy question, but also how the technology will eventually be used in medicine, helping doctors diagnose illnesses.

Photo by PPPL's Elle Starkman

After that televised Jeopardy match, Watson "traveled" to Capitol Hill to take on members of Congress including the lab's Representative, Congressman Rush Holt. Before he joined Congress, Rush was the Assistant Director of PPPL and a major supporter of our Science Education Program. He is now also the only person to have publicly defeated Watson, winning a round of Jeopardy against the computer and making headlines for a human beating the machine. Before the Science on Saturday talk, I had the pleasure of introducing the creator of Watson to the person that bested it (at least for now).

Brain Bowl

2011-03-10T13:00:00.000-05:00

A short piece on the NJ Science Bowl competition that we recently hosted and the software that I am a co-inventor on that is used to keep score and time. Photo and text courtesy of PPPL.

Students from Highland Park High School, at right, compete in the regional tournament of the U.S. Department of Energy's Science Bowl held Mar. 27 at PPPL. PPPL's Andrew Zwicker, second from left, moderates, with Clayton Myers, a graduate student, at his side as a monitor. PPPL's Thomas McGeachen, at center, acts as timekeeper. Winners of the competition from both the high school and middle school levels will compete in Washington, D.C., in May. The center display, invented at the lab, is a patented timekeeping and scorekeeping software called the "Process for Administering Distributed Academic Competitions." The program has been licensed to schools hosting science competitions. Its inventors are Eliot Feibush, Andrew Zwicker, James Morgan and Benjamin Phillips. (Photo by Elle Starkman/PPPL Office of Communications)

President Obama lauds DOE energy efficiency program

2011-03-09T11:17:00.006-05:00

President Obama lauds DOE energy efficiency program

Here's an official story from PPPL on President Obama's announcement of the GPIC HUB. My post on seeing Coach Paterno and shaking the President's hand is below.

By Kitta MacPherson, PPPL

U.S. President Barack Obama touted the importance of energy efficiency programs funded by the U.S. Department of Energy in moving the nation toward a clean energy future in a talk delivered Thursday, Feb. 3, at Pennsylvania State University. He also toured the university's campus with Steven Chu, the U.S. Energy Secretary.

Obama praised efforts such as those taking place at the Energy Innovation Hub for Energy Efficient Buildings at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, a federal initiative that is led by Penn State and includes funding for research at the Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University.

"You're preparing to lead the way on a hub that will make America home to the most energy-efficient buildings in the world," Obama told a crowd of about 3,000 students, faculty, staff and invited guests.

Such guests included several PPPL scientists associated with the project, including Adam Cohen, the deputy director for operations, Andrew Zwicker, the head of science education, and Stephanie Wissel, a postdoctoral fellow at the laboratory who also works on the project.

"We are very excited at the chance of using our own experience in improving our own efficiency and in educating students and in applying this knowledge to improving building efficiency for the nation," Cohen said, after hearing the President's speech.

Zwicker, the associate director of workforce development for the project, said he was thrilled by Obama's emphasis on education as the foundation of job growth. "I'm honored to be a part of this and excited to be beginning the work," Zwicker said.

The $122 million project brings together researchers from universities, national laboratories and private industry to find ways to reduce energy use in buildings, which now accounts for 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption and carbon emissions. It is one of three energy innovation hubs that will receive funding from the DOE.

At PPPL, Zwicker is overseeing the creation of education programs to train people about energy-efficiency technology and systems. Robert Sheneman, the head of the lab's materiel/environmental division, and Keith Rule, an environmental project engineer, also are on the project team at PPPL. Researchers from Princeton's engineering school will focus on developing sensors for measuring how energy flows through buildings and on creating computerized systems that can use that information to better manage how homes are heated and cooled.

At the Philadelphia Navy Yard, more than 90 organizations are involved in the development of innovative technologies that will improve the energy efficiency of commercial and residential buildings. A Clean Energy Campus will be developed there as a proving ground for technologies that will help the nation to reduce overall building energy consumption by 50 percent to 80 percent.

"The discoveries made on (the Clean Energy Campus) will lead to jobs in engineering, manufacturing, construction, installation and retail," Obama said. "They'll be more than jobs that help support families, they'll be jobs with a national purpose; jobs that make our economy smarter, make our planet safer and help America maintain its competitive edge in the 21st Century."

Obama said the innovations produced will bring continued economic prosperity for future generations of Americans.

"If you remember that, and keep breaking new ground and we as a country keep investing in you, I'm confident that America will win the future in this century, just like we did in the last," Obama said.

As part of his announcement on funding, the president unveiled the Better Buildings Initiative, a plan to improve energy efficiency of commercial building space in the U.S. by 20 percent over the next nine years.

Nifty Fifty (times two)

2011-02-09T16:52:00.000-05:00

The 2nd Science and Engineering Festival on the National Mall in Washington, DC was just announced for the spring of 2012. (Here's an older post about the first one.) I was recently named one of the Nifty Fifty (x2) for this event. The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 2)’ are a group of one hundred noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, DC area in the 2011-2012 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. It should be a lot of fun and they just posted a great bio of me, check it out.

Shaking the President's Hand

2011-02-09T16:39:00.005-05:00

A visit by the Secretary of Energy is cool (see below), but a chance to shake the hand of the POTUS is more awesome than I ever imagined!

Besides my day job at PPPL, I am the Associate Director for Education and Workforce Development for the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster (GPIC). Located at The Navy Yard in Philadelphia, the goals of the GPIC are to improve energy efficiency and operability and reduce carbon emissions of new and existing buildings, and to stimulate private investment and quality job creation in the Greater Philadelphia region, the larger Mid Atlantic region, and beyond. Penn State University is leading the effort but there are dozens of institutions all working together for this common goal. Funding for GPIC includes $122,000,000 from the Department of Energy, $30,000,000 from the state of Pennsylvania, and millions more from other federal agencies. My role in all of this is to coordinate the educational activities and the workforce pipeline for people at all levels involved in building design and construction. That includes everyone from the contractors to the engineers to the architects. We need to figure out what new skills this workforce needs, now to get them the training, and how to help them get high quality jobs.

But that's not what I wanted to blog about...

Last week, the White House announced that President Obama would travel to Penn State to announce the start of GPIC and that there would be an invitation-only event and I was invited. Well, that's interesting! And it wasn't just me, I also got to go with my colleagues, Adam Cohen and Stephanie Wissel (Assistant Director of PPPL and a post-doctoral fellow in Science Education, respectively). Then, the night before, Adam and I got an email letting us know that we were no longer simply VIP guests, now we were Honored VIP guests. (sorry Steph!)

But there was a catch. We had to be there by 9:30 am, the weather had been terrible (the event was actually postponed by 24 hours due to the weather) and it seemed easier to leave in the morning. So we left at 4:30 am for Happy Valley.

By 9:30 am we were on the line to get into Rec Hall, a gymnasium with folding chairs on the floor and bleachers up high. The line was packed, the Secret Service were everywhere, and we slowly made our way through security (similar to airport security). But all of a sudden the very special VIPs got to cut the line and within a few minutes we were past security and inside.

Cameras were everywhere, there was a big stage set up, and the place was filling up quickly. We were also told that the President would begin his speech around noon, but the doors to Rec Hall would be closed at 11:00 am. That gave us time to find our seats, talk, take in the atmosphere, etc. So I marched up to the front and went past the ropes that separated the first 4 rows from the rest of the floor to find my assigned seat. I didn't see it so I figured I should go to the front center and scan to the left and right. Still nothing. Then I looked down. And there I was, there was my name in the last place I considered looking. Front row, center. Whoa. And two rows behind me are 4 reserved seats for the real star of the show and his family. Joe Pa. Coach Paterno and his family have seats behind me?

Coach Paterno finding his seat behind me.

I planted myself in the aisle next to those seats and spent the next 45 minutes talking to colleagues but really just camping out so I could stand next to Coach Paterno when he and his family arrived. And a few minutes before 11:00 am the energy in the auditorium changed. The students started another chant of WE ARE...PENN STATE...but this time it was LOUD. And getting louder and louder. The students started going nuts....The crowd parted and sure enough, there he was.

Now I'm really getting into it but I have to be on a conference call. I'm organizing a large group of teachers from around the country to fly on NASA's microgravity airplane this summer and I organized a conference call at 11 am weeks before I knew about this visit. I apologized for the background noise, we went through the agenda, and around 11:40 am I got to say something I've never said during a conference call before. "I'm sorry, but I have to go, the President of the United States is about to come out to give a speech."

And a little after 12:00 pm he came out to a loud ovation. Quite simply, he's amazing, the charisma, the ability to inspire, to communicate, all of the things that pour off of him when you see him on television are so obviously stronger when he is 20 feet away from you. He was funny, poignant, and eloquent. Here's a 1 minute clip from his speech when he gives an overview of GPIC.

Finally, after a rousing 25 minute speech, it was time for the President to press the flesh. It's a firm handshake. (You can see the entire speech on C-Span here.)

A Visit from the Secretary

2010-09-28T14:26:00.000-04:00

photo by PPPL's Elle Starkman

Yesterday, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu visited the lab for the morning. He's a Nobel-prize winning physicist and a fascinating person. His visit included a talk to all staff about the importance of developing new energy sources and then he went on a tour that included our major experiments and the Science Education Laboratory. I thought his talk was excellent, he eloquently painted a bleak picture of where the Earth is headed if we do nothing and offered his ideas on what we can do. After his visit, he headed down to Philadelphia to announce the Energy Efficient Building HUB and I headed down to that with PPPL's Assistant Director Adam Cohen. The press conference was packed, the governor of PA and the mayor of Philadelphia spoke, and there were plenty of tv cameras and reporters. (I'm running the Workforce Development component of the HUB.) Just a typical day in the life of a science edumacator...!

Live Television - it's shocking and cold!

2010-09-20T18:28:00.003-04:00

The Inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival, hosted by Lockheed Martin, is the country’s first national science festival and descends on the Washington, D.C. area in October 2010. Opening on 10/10/10 with a concert of amazing science songs performed by over 200 children and adults at the University of Maryland, the Festival promises to be the ultimate multi-cultural, multi-generational and multi-disciplinary celebration of science in the United States. The culmination of the Festival will be a free, two-day Expo on the National Mall and surrounding areas that will feature over 1500 fun, hands-on science activities and over 50 stage show s and performances on four stages. The Festival is a grassroots collaboration of over 500 of the nation’s leading science organizations. The Festival has a bipartisan Honorary Congressional Host Committee with over 100 Members supporting its efforts.

Last week, the organizer of the event asked me to help promote it with him on a live talk show in DC. We had 5 minutes for him to talk about the expo and for me to wow everyone with fun science. I managed to shock one host, splash liquid nitrogen on the other so I thought it went really well!

Here's a link to the video clip.

A new education initiative - green jobs and building efficiency

2010-09-20T18:08:00.000-04:00

Last spring, a team from Penn State visited PPPL to ask if we would like to join their proposal to the Department of Energy for transforming the Philadelphia Navy Yard into a test bed for decreasing the energy consumption of commercial buildings by 50%. I showed them our Science Education laboratory and talked about how we measure the success of our programs. A few days after the visit, I was asked to lead the Workforce Development component of the proposal. A bunch of meetings, even more conference calls, plenty of emails, and the proposal was submitted. A few weeks ago we found out that our proposal was funded. It's a new component to our education activities as well as an exciting opportunity. You can read about it in this press release.

The First Press Release

2010-08-10T22:04:00.002-04:00

Here's a copy of the first press release on our experiment. It was written by PPPL's Patti Wieser and the photo is our group from the first day flight. You can't quite tell, but we're all floating and holding onto our rig which is bolted to the floor.

Plasma, and Convection, and Microgravity! Oh, My!

PPPL Science Education Team Takes Experiment Aboard NASA's Weightless Wonder

Surrounding the box (with a PPPL sticker) containing the plasma ball and lava lamp are, from left, Princeton High School teacher Tim Anderson, PPPL's James Morgan, Notre Dame High School teacher Hope Brennan, PPPL's Andrew Zwicker, and Toms River High School teacher Ken Hartzfeld. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

By Patti Wieser

Using a plasma ball and a glitter lamp, a team from the DOE Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) studied convective flow in microgravity aboard NASA's Weightless Wonder in Houston August 3 and 4.

"We collected data by filming a plasma ball and a 'glitter lamp' as the airplane performed a series of 68 parabolas over two days and the gravitational force varied between 0 and 1.8 g," says PPPL Science Education Program Head Andrew Zwicker.

It was the Lab's third year to participate in experiments on zero-gravity flights and Zwicker's second year aboard one of the 90-minute journeys. "We looked at how changes in gravity affect the rise of the plasma filaments," he says. "Then, just for something extra, we decided to add a glitter lamp, which also shows how shiny pieces of glitter rise when a light bulb at the bottom of the lamp heats the fluid within."

Plasma, the fourth state of matter, is a hot, electrically charged gas. The team recorded the plasma filaments' rate of rise under microgravity, and compared it to the rate under normal and hypergravity.

In a plasma ball, filaments of plasma form when a central electrode ionizes gas atoms inside the sphere. The plasma filaments heat the background gas, causing it to rise convectively. This creates an area of smaller gas density. The next plasma filament forms slightly higher than the one it replaced since it is easier to form the filament in that location. The net result is that the plasma filaments in the plasma ball rise to the top. However, in zero gravity, the plasma filaments freeze.

"We used standard video equipment and visual analysis software for the experiment. The team is analyzing the video and writing new curricula for their classes so that their students can use this data," notes PPPL Senior Program Leader James Morgan, who participated.

The team spent several days in Houston, training and preparing for the flight before taking their science experiment aboard. Participating teachers are from the DOE Academies Creating Teacher Scientists (ACTS) program at PPPL, a seven-week mentored research experience for high school and middle school teachers (see list below).

"It went beyond awesome," Zwicker says of the experience. "It was a fusion of education and science."

The ACTS teachers who participated in experiments aboard the Weightless Wonder are:

Tim Anderson, Princeton High School, Princeton, NJ
Hope Brennan, Notre Dame High School, Lawrenceville, NJ
Pamella Ferris, Riverside Middle School, Evans, GA
Ken Hartzfeld, Toms River High School, Toms River, NJ
Paul Sedita, Canandaigua Academy, Canandaigua, NY
Lisa Tarman, William Penn High School, York, PA

PPPL Science Education participants:
James Morgan
Andrew Zwicker

***END***

Photos!

2010-08-06T18:38:00.004-04:00

NASA was fast in uploading the photos. Here's a link to all of them:

Click here:

Our entire group, PPPL on the left, St. Peter's College on
the right.

And a few favorites...

Just floating

First parabola!

Push-ups in a lunar gravity

Another Day, Another Flight

2010-08-05T09:08:00.002-04:00

There's not enough room on the plane for an entire team at once so Day 2 is another 34 parabolas with Pam, Lisa, and Paul aboard. The routine is the same but the roles are now reversed. At 8:00 am Tim, Ken, Hope, James, and myself went aboard to prepare the experiment and make some changes. We modified the plasma ball so that it no longer had a ground connection and we added a filter to block some of the light on the glitter lamp that was saturating our camera at high power. Everything looked good and it felt great to be on the plane again, even if we weren't flying.

By the time we finished, the others had taken their meds and were going through last minute preparation. We hung out to take photos as they marched onto the plane and then waited as the plane took off into the sky. The rest of the ground crew then rushed off to catch a tour of the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (the world's largest indoor pool) but I hung out at the airfield since I saw it last year.

Before you know it, the others are back from the tour and the plane is on the ground. Pam, Lisa, and Paul walk off the plane with huge smiles, they all felt great! After the plane is checked out it gets unloaded and we're back on the plane to help remove our rig safely. Back on the ground everything looks good but something happened to the computer in flight and it stopped recording about 1/4 of the way into the flight and the files that are there won't open. When we get back to Princeton, I'll see if there is a way to save them but it is a stark reminder of how difficult it is to perform an experiment in that environment. Even if the data is lost, we have excellent data from the first day to look at when we return.

On the way to lunch I literally ran into a group from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) including the past and current presidents of the organization. They sponsored the overall week and were there to fly and to evaluate it. We talked for about 15 minutes about collaborating on science education, exchanged business cards, etc. but had to cut it short because we were all melting in the more than 100 F heat. After lunch and some rest, James and I met with Doug, the head of the microgravity program to talk about how we can continue and expand the collaboration between the Department of Energy, PPPL, and NASA. That was an excellent conversation (why do the most productive meetings seem to always happen with a beer in hand???) and we have a plan on how to move forward. If it all works out, we'll be back next year.

Can't wait!

Up, Up, Up, in the Air

2010-08-04T07:20:00.002-04:00

Another successful flight in microgravity, another try to explain how it feels to float in the air. Uhhhh, hmmmm, welll, ok, you just can't describe it beyond "awesome!"

The routine was the same as last year. Arrival at 7:30 am, pre-flight briefing at 8:00 am. Meds at 8:30 am, board the plane at 9:00 am, take-off at 9:30 am, return at 11:00 am. We have two teams sponsored by the DOE and the two experimental rigs are bolted down next to each other in the plane. The team from Jersey City only had two people flying (one was not medically cleared), so our alternate flyer, Ken, flew along with James, Tim, Hope, and myself. During our pre-flight briefing, Lisa, Pam, and Paul boarded the plane to check that our equipment was set up and ready to go.

During the briefing, the NASA official took us through the details of the flight -- 30 parabolas of zero-G, each lasting approximately 25 seconds followed by approximately the same amount of time at the bottom of the parabola at 1.8 g. We are going to do 18 of these in a row before leveling the plane out to turn around and then another 12. This will be followed by 2 parabolas at a lunar gravity (1/6 that of Earth) and then 2 final parabolas at Martian gravity (0.4 g).

That was followed by a member of the airplane's crew taking us through the safety concerns during take-off and landing (wear your seatbelt, oxygen below the seat) before the flight physician explained the details of the medicines we were about to take. (I took the highest dosage but if I fly again, I think I will drop it down a bit since my head was definitely fuzzy before and for a long time after the flight.)

We swallowed the pills, met with the entire team to go over the experiment, lined up in single file for the march onto runway and boarded the plane. I wasn't really nervous this time, just thrilled to be there. When we got to 5,000 feet they released us from our seats (don't forget to re-buckle your seat belts so they don't fly around during parabolas) and we walked to the front of the plane to our experiment while the plane is still rapidly climbing.

It took about 15 minutes to get to our flight zone and then the 1 minute call went out. We gave each other the thumbs up and then either lay down flat on our backs or sat with our backs against the padded wall waiting for the plane to pull the nose up sharply into our first parabola. As it does, you feel this weight on your body everywhere and you are driven into the padded floor of the plane. After 20 seconds or so that weight eases and then it happens....you just float off the floor into the air! It is simply incredible to be on the ceiling of the plane, relaxed, at ease, looking down at our experiment while everywhere I looked are people just floating through the air with the biggest smiles and looks of amazement that matches my own.

We will get the video in a few weeks and I'll post it here, it does a much better job of describing the looks on our faces. Our experiment worked well, the plasma ball filaments freeze in zero-G, James and Hope felt great the entire time, Tim was just a bit sick near the end, Ken got sick around the 5th parabola, and I had just a touch of nausea but ignored it and tried to savor each and every parabola. If I had to guess, my slight nausea was due to taking photos and video with our small personal cameras and looking through the little screen. Once I stopped doing that, I felt fine.

After the flight, we took a group photo, had a post-flight briefing, gave back our flight suits, and went to get something to eat since we were all starving. From there it was another behind-the-scenes tour at the Johnson Space Flight Center where the highlight included the kitchen where they develop new foods for the astronauts.

What an incredible day!

Year 2, Day 1 - Back in Houston

2010-08-02T23:19:00.003-04:00

It's a little more than a year later and I'm back in Houston for another series of experiments in microgravity. No more dusty plasmas, this time we're looking at convection in a varying gravitational field. Instead of undergraduate students, I'm here with a group of teachers from around the country. Here's some background about how we got here.

Last year, in between the training and flight, I talked to the NASA education folks about the possibility of doing something similar with teachers. This is something NASA already does, teachers design a microgravity experiment with their students and then bring it back to the classroom. PPPL has a variety of programs for teachers, including a summer research internship. Combining the two seemed like a natural fit, the only question was how. Fast forward from last summer to this spring and NASA contacts me to let me know that they have openings for two teams of six flyers in their teacher program. It doesn't leave us much time but that's an opportunity that is too good to pass up. So I contact a colleague of mine that has a grant to fund research with teachers from Jersey City (that's one team), and I put together a second team with teachers already in our research program and we're off.

The problem with the PPPL team is that they don't get to PPPL until the first week of July, leaving us just four weeks to design and build our experiment. With such little time, I decide that it is prudent to use the same setup that the undergraduate team used. It's already approved by the NASA safety group and all we have to do is remove the dusty plasma portion of the rig and replace it with something else. That something else turned out to be a plasma ball. We use them all the time in our workshops to teach about plasma, and the plasma streamers rise due, in part, to the fact that they heat the gas in the ball which then rises. So the question becomes how would changes in gravity effect the rise of the plasma streamers? Then, just to add something extra to the experiment, we decided to add a Glitter Lamp, which also shows how shiny pieces of glitter rise as a light bulb at the bottom of the lamp heats the fluid within. The final piece of our experiment was to add a way that to control the brightness of the glitter lamp and the plasma ball. With that in place, things were still a scramble but we got everything together and shipped it out here in time.

The team flew out on Thursday but since I was already trained, I came out here yesterday. Of course I needed to rent something fun for the drive from the airport and to the airfield. By the time I got here, the team had already eaten so and wanted to go to a karaoke bar. I stopped off at an Indian restaurant next door to the bar and had one of the best meals I've had in a while. Then it was buckets of Coors Lite and Dixie Chicken (Little Feat) (video of me singing), Satisfaction (Stones), Friends in Low Places (Garth Brooks), and Live Like You're Dying (Tim McGraw). Have to say that while it's painfully clear that I can't sing a lick, it was a lot of fun.

Today we made the final preparations and then had the safety walkthrough which we passed with flying colors. Loading the plane took a while but also was straight-forward. Then we had a chance to ask a teacher-astronaut questions (What does the Earth look like when it rises? (beautiful) What does space smell like? (metallic) , Etc.) It was inspiring to hear him speak, as it is whenever you hear about someone's experiences in space.

After that it was time for our motion sickness video and Q&A. One person asked about going to the bathroom on the plane (don't, but if you have to, there's a bag and a bucket). Of course that led to Hope emphatically stating that there would be no sh&^**ing on our flight which seems like a reasonable request. Then it was time to hand out the flight suits. Hope, James, Tim, Ken, and I will fly tomorrow, Lisa, Pam, and Paul on Wednesday. I'm a little bit nervous, but nothing like last year. I felt great before, I should feel even better this time. The team is psyched, ready to fly, do some science, and have some fun. Tomorrow we get there at 7:30 am, take our meds around 8:30 am, and fly at 9:30 am. I can't wait.

Video of Flight

2009-07-02T12:55:00.004-04:00

NASA sent the video of our flight and I put it into iMovie and then uploaded it to Youtube. I added a brief introduction that shows how the plane creates the 25 seconds of microgravity. It also has footage taken of the Vomit Comet from another plane flying level so you can see how steep the ascent and descent actually are. As I watch the footage, it not only makes me smile but brings back the vivid memories of this awesome experience.

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhqXK3EwAUc

Feet Back On The Ground

2009-06-19T21:35:00.004-04:00

It's hard to believe that it's been more than a week since the flight. Aliya has made a first pass through the data and we have beautiful clouds between 1.8 - 0.5 g but in microgravity the dust escapes from the potential well we've created and gets pinned to the glass wall of our vacuum vessel. Once the plane noses over the top of the parabola and gravity increases, we can watch the dust stream back into the center of the chamber and self-organize itself back into a cloud.

Here's a couple of stories about the flight.

www.pppl.gov

http://www.nj.com/news/times/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-17/1245384362182740.xml&coll=5

For a good laugh, check out a powerpoint presentation that Chaz put together about my schmoozing acumen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z6SpPAPXow

Photos

2009-06-13T09:14:00.001-04:00

The official photos of our flight from NASA are here. Take a look when you can.

http://picasaweb.google.com/azwicker/Microgravity?authkey=Gv1sRgCI3To73xwd2NHg&feat=directlink

Back to New Jersey

2009-06-13T00:55:00.001-04:00

As I boarded the plane that would take me back to New Jersey, I couldn't help but laugh. It was a 737, similar to the 727 that we few at NASA and it looked so odd so see it full of seats and luggage and people. The wait to take-off was long, the ascent slow and gradual, the seat uncomfortable. It seems like it wasn't two days ago that I was on the world's most amazing roller coaster, but two years ago. But to call the "Weightless Wonder" a roller coaster is a disservice to both.

But amazing things happen everywhere. First, I watched "Vicky Christina Barcelona," Woody Allen's latest movie about love, lust, passion, and feelings, with the message that life is short, stop thinking, stop analyzing, and just live. Then, we passed a lightning storm at the same altitude that the plane was flying. Below us, the sky was clear but a few miles outside my window was the most spectacular display of lightning. It seemed to be concentrated in two regions, one off in the distance that lit up over and over like the sky on the 4th of July. The other was much closer and much less frequent and we made no obvious attempt to stay clear of it. At one point, a bolt of lightning shot across the sky right next to us and I was both amazed and a little bit scared. 10 minutes later, we were past the storm.

I don't know how any of this is related to my adventures over the last ten days, but it somehow seems the right way to end this trip. The photos from NASA of our flight were posted on the web today, and I'm going to put together a slide show tomorrow and post it here. The photos are incredible and make the flight vivid again in my mind.

Failure Is Not An Option

2009-06-11T22:43:00.006-04:00

That's a slogan that NASA uses, and it permeates everything they do. Today we had a tour of Johnson Space Center that was just for our group. A behind-the-scenes tour of a small part of the 1,600 acres and 17,000 people that make up JSC. We began in the building that has full-scale mock-ups of a space shuttle, parts of the space station, and a robotics laboratory. This is where the astronauts practice a variety of tasks and one of the first things we saw was a group working on a new generation of space suits. Doug, the head of the Microgravity program pointed out that the person in the center of the group was an astronaut that had spent 3 months on the space station and was scheduled to go up on a future shuttle flight.

Here I am sitting in an actual chair used in the space shuttle

and it is definitely designed for function and not comfort. We also saw a floor that was sort of like a gigantic air hockey table. The chairs that are put on it "float" as the astronauts practice performing tasks on this chair, moving around as if they were weightless.

Next we went into a robotics lab and met

"Robonaut." This is a prototype of a robotic assistant for space walks and some day might be controlled from inside the space station by an

astronaut wearing gloves and a virtual reality visor. If the astronaut closes a hand, so does Robonaut. Versions of this might go on a future Mars rover or help repair something on the space station.

NASA is also working on a version that moves like a spider. "Spidernaut" has 8 legs and distributes it's weight among them in order to travel over a

variety of terrains such as the surface of Mars.

Next was the observation area of Mission Control for the space shuttle and we were

just in time to see a ceremony hanging a large patch honoring the team for the last shuttle mission, the one that successfully repaired the Hubble Telescope for the last time. 6 of the 7

astronauts from that mission were there and the Mission Director handed out awards to most of the teams. He gave a special award to the team that supported the space walks and they got to hang the patch.

From here, we went to Mission Control for the Apollo missions. This was the actual room

where they did all of the missions, including landing on the moon. Hanging from the ceiling

was a flag flown on the moon and then brought back to Earth. Hollywood recreated it perfectly for the movie Apollo 13.

Tomorrow, our alternate flyer, Aliya, gets to fly with one of the other schools and we'll be there to support her. After that, I'm headed to the airport to return home. The official NASA photos of our flight will be posted next week and we will have the video in a few weeks. It's hard to believe that the trip is almost over.

Yesterday's flight seems like a dream.

It Was Awesome!

2009-06-10T19:42:00.009-04:00

There is absolutely now way I can fully explain what I felt today. Awesome? Amazing? Unique? Sure. But it was so much more.

Our day started at 7:30 am with check-in and our ground crew (Rachel, Russ, Chaz, and Ailya) going to the plane to get everything set-up. I realized last night that our laser was in a good position for normal gravity but not for zero gravity. So I asked the ground team to raise the laser into a better position and to figure out how to firmly attach our accelerometer cable to the port on the plane. They did all of that and more and left the plane knowing that the equipment was set up optimally.

Meanwhile, Darrick, Chris, and I went to our pre-flight briefing. Take off around 9:15 am,

landing around 10:45 am, we'd be doing 30 normal parabolas cycling between

0 g and 1.8 g, and a single parabola each at lunar gravity and Martian gravity. The flight surgeon that would be on the flight told us more about the optional anti-nausea medication and then gave us our pills. Basically, I took 5 mg of speed and 2.5 mg of a depressant with a group of undergraduates and the government not only approved it, they paid for it.

About 15 minutes later, the speed kicked in and I got the giggles. In between, Chris, Darrick, and I reveiwed the experimental plan for the flight, hung out, and all of a sudden, it was time to board. The plane is a 727 jet with about 30 seats in the back. We climbed the ladder in the tail, checked our experiment and sat down for the take-off. By now, the adrenaline had kicked in and I felt fine.

After 10 minutes, the plane leveled off and we were allowed to move to our experiment while we continued the flight out over the Gulf of Mexico. Everything looked great, we had a large cloud, the computer was recording video from both cameras, there was nothing to do but wait.

When we got the "1 minute" call we sat down with our backs against the padded wall which is the optimal position for the hypergravity portion. Our plan called for the first two parabolas to be practice-only and we weren't going to look at our experiment. There are no windows around us, so we can't see the horizon and as the plane lifted its nose, all we could feel is the increase in the gravitational force making our legs and arms really heavy. On computer monitors in the cabin and also on our own experiment, you could watch g increase from 1 g to 1.8 g and then start to decrease towards 0 g.We sat together in the lotus position, smiling, nervous, ready to float.

As we got near the zero-gravity part of the parabola, we started to float just a bit. Then, all of a sudden, we floated off the ground entirely and headed right to the padded ceiling! I have no idea how to describe it, but we just pushed ourselves back down and then the call for "feet down" came and gravity "turned back on." Sitting up, we rode out the next hypergravity portion and then right back into zero gravity. This time, I tried to keep my movements small and I felt I had much more control as we floated around the ceiling.

Now we got ready to start the experiment. Chris lay down on his belly with a direct view of the plasma and dust cloud. I headed to the other end of our box so I could control the power supply voltage and the argon pressure. Darrick was in the middle, mostly just spacing out. This time, when we went into zero-g, we all held onto our box which was bolted down to the floor. Our bodies, however, lifted off and so we were all at a 45 degree angle up, with our feet higher than our heads, our sneakers pressing against the back wall holding us in that position. One hand held onto the handles of our box and the other was used to make adjustments. We had a small computer monitor attached to the top of our box and I floated above it, looking down for the clouds.

For the next 15 parabolas, we had a beautiful cloud in 1 g and hypergravity but nothing in zero-gravity. And that's what we ended up with. We haven't done any analysis yet, but it appears that the cloud fell apart in zero-g and then reformed as gravity turned back on. With our wide-view camera, we could watch this process over and over. It also looked like we had a varying-gravitational field-induced dust acoustic wave. (That last sentence was just in case any plasma physicists are reading this!)

After the 17th parabola, the plane turned around and did another 13. Bottom line is that we got excellent data today with a variety of interesting phenomena to study. (Aliya is spending the summer in my lab working on this.)

During all this time, NASA had photographers and videographers taking video and photos of all of us. We had plenty of time to "play," I spun Chris in a summersault, we had a catch with a rubber band that just floated through the cabin, and I tried to use both Chris and Darrick as weights over my head as I exercised by doing pull-ups on them.

We ended by doing a parabola at lunar gravity (hopping around the cabin was fun) and Martian gravity (not so interesting). Throughout, I was very conscious of not moving my head back and forth too much and felt really good throughout the flight. I wouldn't call it normal, but I never felt nauseous at all.

We returned to the airfield, took a group photo, had a post-flight briefing, and then went to get lunch. In the afternoon, we packed everything up. Tomorrow is a behind-the-scenes tour of Johnson Space Center.

I'm Heavy, I'm Light, I'm Heavy, I'm Light, I'm ...

2009-06-09T18:00:00.006-04:00

First Flight Day. We met at 7:30 am to prepare for the 9:15 am take-off. Justin, Darrick, Chris, Aylia, and I are the ground crew while Rachel, Russ, and Chaz are the flyers. The flyers put on their olive NASA jumpsuits and head into the pre-flight briefing. At 8:00 am, they take their anti-nausea medication, called SCOP-DEX. It is available to participants by prescription only from a NASA Flight Surgeon and distributed just prior to flight. SCOP-DEX is a controlled substance used by NASA for thirty years with almost no adverse effects. It is a combination of Scopolamine (0.4 mg) and Dexedrine (5 mg) tablets. Basically, that's a dangerous street drug (at much higher dosages) combined with an upper. Wow! Historically, 60% of first-time student flyers in the Reduced Gravity program experience significant motion sickness, including nausea and vomiting. However, when students carefully follow the instructions of the flight personnel, and use the recommended dosage of SCOP-DEX, this motion sickness rate drops to 15% or less. I wonder if I should take it tomorrow? Okay, done wondering, give me the maximum dose!

While all of this is going on, we are in the plane powering up the experiment and checking all the last minute details. All systems are go! We have a beautiful cloud, it's stable, happy, and reproducible. The only issue is that NASA loaded the bottle of argon we were using in the lab and it is almost empty (about 100lbs left when 2,500 lbs is full) and there is no replacement bottle. If it runs out, the experiment won't work and there's nothing we can do. I had been roughly keeping track of our argon consumption rate in the lab and while I don't know it exactly, I'm fairly certain we have enough for the flight. We quickly talk about what we can do if the argon runs out, and NASA assures us that they will have a full bottle of argon for us in the afternoon. As we're getting off the plane, the line of students getting ready to fly approaches. That's Rachel in the middle of the photo waving to me. NASA does an amazing job with documenting all of this and there are photographers and videographers recording all of this. (They are also on the flight and we'll have copies of everything in a few weeks.)

At 9:30 am, they take off and we watch the plane slowly lift it's nose off the ground and then pull up into a steep ascent and bank sharply towards the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Nothing at all like the gentle ascent of a commercial airline flight. At that point, there's nothing for us to do so we head off to get some breakfast and watch the landing at 11:00 am.

Touchdown is perfect and as the entire group gets off the plane, we're on the runway to greet them. Rachel is smiling and bouncing, Chaz is grinning, and Russ manages a weak smile but looks a little pale. (You can imagine how each of them did.) Unfortunately, we didn't get any data at all! The cloud was stable in 1g but disappeared once the parabolas started and nothing they did could get it to come back. On top of that, the cable that we ran to the accelerometer port fell off because the only way to hold it in place was duct tape. As we reviewed the video, we confirmed that we only had accelerometer data for the first few parabolas and there was no evidence of a dust cloud. That was frustrating.

As I write this, we don't know why we didn't see any clouds during the flight. The team tried just about everything except for moving the laser and that's probably what needed to happen. Turns out that the gravitational acceleration along the axis of the plane is not zero and so, like the force you feel when you quickly accelerate in your car from a stop, our cloud most likely shifted out of the laser beam, to the back side of the chamber. That's what we'll look for tomorrow and with any luck, we'll find the cloud.

The other issue is that NASA is not flying their own plane with their own pilots this year, and have contracted out to a private company. The quality of the parabolas, like the accelerometer port connectors, is significantly reduced compared to previous years. Last year, the changes in gravity were smooth and the parabolas did not vary much. That's not the case at all this year. It is already tremendously difficult to work in a zero-g environment and this makes data collection nearly impossible.

Finally, we saw two more amazing aircraft. The one on the right is an Air Force cargo jet and while it's hard to tell from the photo, it is absolutely enormous. The one on the left is a WB-57 high altitude aircraft, one of only two in the world. It can fly up to FL600 (60,000 ft) for a variety of research missions. The other one is behind it, undergoing an extensive maintenance. As I wrote before, NASA has all the cool "toys."

Houston, We Have A Go For Launch

2009-06-08T22:45:00.008-04:00

We are ready for the flight!

The day started at 7:30 am as the team finished the last minute preparations before the safety inspection at 10:30 am. Everything was going well until we turned on the vacuum pum

p. It didn't sound good, sort of the sound we heard back at PPPL when it was full of water vapor and the worst case scenario was that the valves were bad and would have to be replaced. We had the spare parts but it would be a huge job and we were told that if we passed the safety inspection we would load onto the plane around 1:30. It took a couple of hours before we

(meaning Rachel) found a loose connection on the pressure sensor and once that was fixed, everything was working well. We made a dust cloud just in time before about 15 people surrounded our experiment for the safety inspection. Russ did a gre

at job leading them through all of the potential hazards and they asked plenty of questions. In the end, they wanted a few calculations redone, some sharp corners covered, and that was about it. We then took our experiment in its metal box to be weighed. There was a 300 lb limit and we weighted in at 295 lbs. Phew!

Then Ailya, Chris, and Chaz left to go in the hyperbaric chamber and I decided we should try to work on the laser alignment because there were a lot of reflections from our glass chamber. What's that saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Should have listened to that. The good news was that we found that the screw that was holding our laser lens was so loose that it

had almost fallen out. If it had during the flight, we wouldn't be able to see our cloud. The bad news was that after we fixed that, we could never get our cloud back into a sharp focus. It's good enough to take data, but not of the quality we had before I started messing around with things. And in the end, it's also a lesson for next year to work harder on the imaging system.

Around 1pm we loaded the experiment onto the plane with a forklift. Our holding bracke

ts fit perfectly and all four bolts easily fit into the floor of the plane. In this photo, you can see Russ talking to the NASA technicians that are bolting the experiment to the floor. We hooked the argon gas line up to our chamber and we're set. Hard to believe that tomorrow

Rachel, Russ, and Chaz will be flying.

Finally, behind our plane is NASA's 747 that they use to transport the shuttle from where it lands in California to where it takes off in Florida. It's a huge plane and you could see the brackets on the top of it where they attach the space shuttle to the plane. It was spectacular to see it up close like that.

Crepes, Jet Skis, And Dinner At A Movie

2009-06-07T23:57:00.003-04:00

Sunday started when Rachel, Darrick, and Russ picked me up for brunch at a crepe restaurant. Every day in Houston so far has been sunny and beautiful and we ate outside and watched the people on the sidewalk. We then met up with the rest of the team, minus Justin, for 90 minutes of jet skiing. That was fun. Finally, we went to see the movie, The Hangover, at a theater that serves dinner and beer. Seems that Texas has these all over the place and I wonder why we don't see them in New Jersey. The movie was sophomoric, immature, played up to a variety of male stereotypes, and was probably one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Throughout it, people brought us food and drink. How can you go wrong with that?

Tomorrow is a big day, our Test Readiness Review (TRR). A safety team will inspect our experiment and determine if it is safe to fly. To prepare, the team put together a document that discussed all of the potential hazards associated with our experiment and a calculation to show that it would not break apart, hurt someone, etc. If we pass the review then we can load the experiment on the plane and fly on Tuesday/Wednesday. I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes.

A Chili Contest And An Accordion Festival

2009-06-07T12:29:00.008-04:00

The hyperbaric room is a steel box, about 8 ft wide by 20 ft long. There's one door and it can be sealed tight and there is a system to control the air in the room so that they can simulate the atmosphere at different levels. Inside the room are 16 seats with connections for each seat that have oxygen hook-ups and a communication port. Inside our mask is a microphone and speakers. Eight people sit on one side of the room, eight on the other. When we got to FL250 (25,000 ft) after breathing pure oxygen for 30 minutes, half the group took off their masks. My side got to watch them for 5 minutes as the person controlling the chamber asked them questions, and they wrote down any symptoms they might have at each minute. A couple of people clearly had some difficulty and put their masks back on before the 5 minutes was completed. Then it was my group's turn. My mask was incredibly uncomfortable, not designed for a long face and a big nose and it leaked no matter how tight they made it. So they decided just to increase the oxygen pressure in my mask and flow it continually. That kept me from breathing in the room air until I unhooked it and I remember how good it felt to finally get the mask off. The air smelled stale and I felt nothing at first. We had a clipboard with a worksheet on it and a pencil so I wrote my last name backwards without a problem. At one minute, I wrote that I had no symptoms and my handwriting was neat. Then I wrote the last 4 presidents in reverse order through Bush Senior and couldn't remember anyone after that. At two minutes I wrote that I had no symptoms. I tried a math problem on the worksheet. 82-45. I instantly realized that I would have to carry a 1 over to do this problem and that just seemed like too much of a bother so I decided to skip the math. At 3 minutes I wrote "slight lightheaded" and my handwriting is a little messy. Then my vision got a little fuzzy, and I was still lightheaded. I wrote "slight vision, lighthead vision" and it's getting tough to read my writing. Finally, at 5 minutes I wrote "same as four min" and they had us put our masks back on. The instructors had talked about how we might feel drunk or euphoric and I was really looking forward to that. The instructor asked each of us through our headsets what we felt and I said, not much, and I was really looking forward to feeling "giddy." He replied that he wouldn't normally use that type of word when talking about himself. Ahh, the ex-military comes out.

It actually had such a big build-up that the actual experience was slightly disappointing. I'm hoping that there is some type of connection between doing well in the chamber and doing well in microgravity but I've been assured that is not the case.

*****************

The weekend is ours to explore so Saturday morning I found an outdoor cafe for a Tex-Mex brunch and then met up with the entire team. We went to the 31st Annual Johnson Space Center FOD Chili Cookoff. (I have no idea what FOD stands for.) There were hundreds of people there, about two dozen teams, and elaborate booths and nicknames for each team.

The education office camped out overnight and had a great time though they didn't win any awards. It was all the beer and chili you could eat for $10 and the NASA folks not only work hard, they play hard. (I was jealous. At PPPL, we have a picnic once every two years with volleyball and pepsi.)

Then we went to the JSC science museum, checked out the gift shop and the activities. There wasn't much, but we had a good time acting like kids, going through an obstacle course, riding a virtual roller coaster. The photo is a mock-up of the cockpit of the shuttle which was pretty cool.

By now it's around 7 pm so Rachel, Darrick, Russ, and I decide to drive up to Houston and go to the 20th Annual Accordion Kings & Queens Festival. We had no idea what to expect but there were several thousand people there, a dozen accordion bands, all at a park with a stage, seats, and a lawn. They also named the best accordion player under 25 from either TX or LA. It was amazing, lots of traditional bands, bi-lingual banter between songs, and some big names. (Not that we recognized them but people around us cheered loudly when they heard

who was playing.) We also got to try playing an accordion during a free mini-lesson/demonstration. Last year's under-25 winner was there playing and we hung out with him for a bit. Near the end of the concert, there was one zydeco band from LA, four generations of one family, and a 10-year old drum player. They just rocked! Incredible energy, great music, jamming and having a good time. We bought their CD and had the lead singer and accordion player sign it, dedicated to Team DPX. We left around 10:30 pm to get some dinner (more Tex-Mex) with big smiles on our faces. Sometimes, when you have no expectations, you end your day with a perfect margarita and a smile. Sunday, I will wear my accordion festival t-shirt proudly and we're going jet-skiing.

Under Pressure? No Worries, Just Make Sure To Valsalva!

2009-06-06T11:23:00.014-04:00

Hey, why don't you get to Johnson Space Flight Center at 7:00 am, we'll have shuttle buses take all 80 participants to the building that houses Mission Control, put you in an auditorium for a 4-hour powerpoint presentation, give you a quick lunch break, a quick tour, more powerpoint, then we'll put you in a sealed metal box attached to a big vacuum pump, drop the oxygen level down to the equivalent of 25,000 ft. (or FL 250, more on that later), and see what happens?

Ummm, ok.

Actually, the correct answer is HELL YES!

So we walk into this building and the first thing we see is the real entrance to the real Mission Control. We get to go inside next week during our big tour but it's just really amazing to see people walking into it and all the photos of rocket launches and shuttle missions.

Justin and Rachel did this last year so they are back at Ellington Field working on the experiment, but the other 5 students and myself march into the auditorium with the rest of the group. We sit in the back, a really bad idea because that's the easiest place to get a nap, or crack some jokes. And we've been warned about falling asleep but the auditorium is about 50 degrees so it should be good.

NASA considers us "mission crew" during our microgravity flight and our responsibilities are significantly more than if we were flying a commercial flight. We've all heard the video about a loss of cabin pressure and the "dixie cup" oxygen masks that will drop down. Remember, put the mask on yourself first, then any small children. Well NASA wants us to know what it would feel like if there was a loss of cabin pressure on the Vomit Comet since we won't be sitting and there are no dixie cup masks in the ceiling. At 25,000 feet, the oxygen level has dropped down significantly and breathing this air causes hypoxia. Symptoms include blurred vision, euphoria, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, headaches, and so on. Let's do it!

Here's our agenda for the day.

Lectures: Introduction --> Hypoxia --> Hyperventilation --> Trapped Gas --> Decompression Sickness --> Spatial Disorientation & Motion Sickness --> Lunch --> Oxygen Equipment --> Altitude Chamber Preflight Briefing --> Altitude Chamber Flight --> Altitude Chamber Post Flight Briefing --> Dinner.

Our instructors are all retired military, very serious, and the lectures are actually quite interesting. Of course NASA is a government agency so acronyms are common (just like at PPPL but worse) and we learn about the atmosphere and oxygen levels and the types of hypoxia. (FL 250 = 25,000 ft above SL (sea level) and at FL250 you have about 3-5 minutes of TUC or EPT (time of useful consciousness or effective performance time)) Oh, here's a little trivia fact. Above FL630, called Armstrong's Line, the boiling temperature of bodily fluids is 98.6 F so without a full pressure suit you will just boil off your blood and die. I wanted to ask who Armstrong was and how they found this out but kept quiet.

I missed some of the lecture on Trapped Gases and how to correct for them, because I had a work meeting with some of the NASA education people about future collaborations. It was an excellent meeting but I did miss some critical information. Not on the usual ways of releasing trapped gases, naturally I'm an expert. I missed the discussion of "valsalva." The technique is named after Antonio Maria Valsalva, the 17th century physician from Bologna and is a way to clear trapped gases from your ear canal. You pinch both nostrils closed, take a breath of air, close your mouth tight, tilt your head back 10 degrees and blow out your nose. Our instructor was very, very enthusiastic about the technique and it became the catch-phrase for the rest of our day. "Hey, I just valsalved." "Don't forget to valsalva before bed." "Sometimes I feel the need to valsalva every single day." Darrick and I found that hysterically funny and I know it won't translate to those reading this, but I'm laughing as I type.

Right before lunch was the spatial disorientation lecture and both Darrick and Chris got picked for the demonstration. Basically it just consisted of sitting in a rotating stool that had a seat belt with your head down and your eyes closed while the instructor spun you around. We all got a good laugh as they got dizzy, but the point was to demonstrate that when we're in microgravity, we will lose our sense of up and down and our eyes and body can be out of sync with the messages they send to our brain.

After lunch, half the group headed back to work on the experiment (Chris, Chaz, and Aliya) while Darrick, Russ, and I got ready for the chamber. Those that didn't go today will go on Monday. We had some time to kill so we stopped in "Rocket Park" a large hangar with an actual Saturn V rocket lying on it's side. 363 ft long, 103 tons and breath-taking.

Then it was time for our tour of the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, the world's largest indoor pool. 100 ft wide x 200 ft long x 40 ft deep, it holds more than 6,000,000 gallons of water and the filtration system can get through all that water in less than 24 hours. Astronauts train for space walks in the pool, and when we were there a full-size mock-up of part of the International Space Station was submerged. A mock-up of the Hubble Telescope was off to the side of the pool, the repair job finished by astronauts last month. (Every thing at NASA is very big and very impressive.)

The hyperbaric chamber is next to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab and, finally, we had our pre-flight briefing and got fitted with oxygen masks. Once in the chamber, we had to breathe pure oxygen for 30 minutes to reduce the amount of nitrogen in our bodies so we would not get the bends. Then it was a "climb" to FL250 at 5,000 ft/minute where we would level off for our hypoxia experience. Then we "descend" to FL 200 at 3,000 ft/min before heading back to ground level at 2,000 ft/min. While our oxygen masks were off, we had to do a simple worksheet and list any symptoms we felt. Also, we were told it was important to not keep any trapped gases inside our body so if we had to do a "one cheek sneak," just let it go and don't worry about it.

I realize that this is a long post so I'm going to stop here, save the hypoxia experience for tomorrow, and try to upload some actual photos of us. NASA videotaped the experience and we will get a copy of the tape in a few weeks. Just to let you know, I did not have any issues with trapped gases and did not even valsalva once during the "flight." That was a little disappointing, actually.

Houston, Day 1

2009-06-05T06:21:00.008-04:00

And away we go! After an easy flight from Philadelphia to Houston, I picked up my bright orange Chevrolet HHR and headed to the Hotel Icon downtown. It seems like everything in Texas is far apart and the NASA sight is about 35 minutes from where I'm staying. I could have found an Extended Stay hotel or something like that but my hotel is one of those boutique hotels, an old converted bank, and worth the drive. The bathroom is bigger and nicer by itself than some hotels I've stayed in while traveling for work.

8:00 the next morning, I report to hangar 990, the NASA site at Ellington Field. The field was created in 1917 during WW I and is one of the few airfields built for training at that time that is still in use. Besides the microgravity program, the field is the location of the astronaut training aircraft, used by astronauts to practice flying.

The coast guard and national guard also have space at the field which primarily consists of 3 huge runways, old hangars, and low metal buildings. I eventually find our hangar, park my gangsta car, and walk up to the gate where an enormous security guard with a gun greets me, directs me to the check-in, and lets me know that he flew in microgravity 20 years a

go and I'm going to love it.

The hangar doors are open and I immediately see a parked NASA plane. It's huge and one of the planes used for microgravity research, though not the one we're going to fly. This one just escorted the space shuttle back to florida and is now undergoing maintenance. It's right next to where we spend most of our time and just dwarfs us as we move around the hangar.

I checked in, got my NASA badge and we heard multiple times to stay in our area, right next to us is a military hangar, and if we wonder over there we will be arrested. (Sure enough, there are 6 military helicopters parked at the next hangar over and they look impressive.) There are about 10 teams from school over the country, though most are large universities and not a small school like The College of New Jersey. All together, there are about 80 students and we all hear about the program, our schedule for the week, and safety issues.

That takes most of the morning and the rest of the day is spent assembling our experiment which takes the entire day. But we manage to put together the metal box that will be bolted to the floor of the plane and hold our equipment and make a plasma before we all head over the Fuddruckers for a group burger. (Or in my case a veggie burger.)

It's a good first day, but the action really starts on Friday when we are put in the hyperbaric chamber. I'll probably never breathe in the air at the summit of Mount Everest, but I'll soon know what it would feel like when they put us in a sealed room and reduce the oxygen level to the equivalent of being on the summit.

Hey, Stop Changing The Gravity In Here!

2009-06-03T07:31:00.005-04:00

We've got a plasma in our chamber, there's a cloud of dust suspended in our plasma, and now we're going to start changing gravity. The balance between the electric force and the gravitational force is lost and the cloud begins to move up as gravity decreases and down as gravity increases. We can measure that with our wide-field video camera and work out the shape and strength of the electric force. We will also use a camera with a zoom lens to look at the movement of individual dust particles in the cloud as gravity varies between 1.8g and 0g. Our on-board computer stores the video at 30 frames/second and each frame is automatically marked with the pressure in our chamber and the gravitational force. (Thanks to Brandon and Will for writing the computer program that handles all of this!) The only other variable we can control is the strength of the electric force by changing the voltage on our power supply. If it all works as planned, the experiment will practically run itself and all we'll have to do is monitor the voltage on the power supply and adjust the pressure so we can study the dust motion at different pressures.

Off to Houston!

Waiter, There's Dust In My Plasma!

2009-06-02T10:33:00.008-04:00

So if plasma is 99% of the visible universe, the foundation of a new energy source, and used to make fluorescent light bulbs and computer chips, why in the world would we want to mess things up by adding dust? Well, it turns out that space plasmas are full of dust. The tail of a comet, the rings of Saturn, and interstellar clouds are all dusty plasmas. On Earth, dust is a contaminant in a plasma processing device and a concern for the edge of future fusion energy reactors. Dusty plasmas are also of fundamental interest because they can help us understand changes between different states of matter and how systems of particles organize themselves. Thus, understanding how dust behaves in a plasma has both practical applications and satisfies our purely scientific curiosity.

In our lab, we make nice, steady DC glow discharges and then we add dust to the plasma. Our dust can be different things but normally is silica (basically sand) that is about 40 millionth of an inch in diameter (a bit less than the diameter of a strand of hair). Sometimes we use a fluorescent dust instead, one that glows when we illuminate it with a UV light. (More on that below.) In each case, we put the dust on a tray at the bottom of our vacuum vessel.

Sometimes we bathe the dust in the plasma, sometimes we speed things up and send small arcs of plasma to the tray. In both cases, the dust picks up some of the free electrons and now has a negative charge instead of remaining electrically neutral. That charge is the key to making a dusty plasma and everything that happens to the dust. It means that the dust will be repelled from anything else that has a negative charge (remember that like charges repel, opposite charges attract) such as other dust grains. It also means that if the plasma has an area of positive charge (near one of our electrodes that is attached to a power supply) the dust grains will be attracted to that area. If conditions are just right, there will be a cloud of dust floating in the plasma, with an electrical force pulling the cloud up and the force of gravity pulling it down.

Now all we have to do is see the cloud of dust particles. For that, we take a laser pointer and shine it through a lens that makes a vertical line of laser light. Then we look through a vacuum window (with our eyes or a video camera) and observe the laser light that reflects off of the dust. That's what you're seeing when you look at the photo at the end of my last post. There's a piece of metal at the top of the photo and a strong electrical force pulling the cloud into that area. At the bottom is a pile of dust on a tray. In the middle is the cloud and our red laser is going through the center of the cloud which is shaped like a funnel. We are seeing just the "slice" of the cloud illuminated by the laser. If you look closely at the dust cloud, you will see at the bottom the individual larger particles while at the top the individual dust grains are too small for us to see.

Sometimes we try to observe all of the dust grains at once. Instead of a laser line, we switch the dust to a type that glows brightly when we shine an ultraviolet light on it. That helps us study the cloud formation process but the glow from this dust is not as bright as what we can see from a laser.

Finally, here's a video of us forming a cloud with the glowing fluorescent dust. You will see us jump start the process by forcing the plasma down to the tray and then, after a short period of time, the dust organizes itself into the cloud that we observe.

Tomorrow I will write about what happens when you "turn off" gravity and then it's time to fly to Houston.

Is That A Plasma In Your Chamber Or Are You Happy To See Me?

2009-06-01T10:54:00.010-04:00

Sure, the idea of floating in the air for 30 seconds at a time puts a smile on my face every time but this is not just about the adventure and fear that I'll toss my cookies, it's about the science. And we're doing some really cool science up there. So this post is the technical post, the one for you science nerds out there. Everything you ever wanted to know about dusty plasmas in microgravity but were afraid to ask.

It all begins with plasma. Not the stuff in out blood, but the stuff that's 99% of the visible universe. The fourth state of matter. Solid - Liquid - Gas - Plasma. Heat up ice (solid) what do you get? Heat the water (liquid) and you turn it into a gas. But what happens when you add energy to the water vapor? Or any gas? Plasma. In a plasma, there is enough energy added to the gas that some of the electrons that normally orbit around the nucleus are no longer bound and are free. When that happens, it's no longer a gas but a unique state of matter. We know it as the stuff inside a fluorescent light bulb, inside a neon sign, or lightning. It's also inside some flat-screen televisions and has a variety of industrial applications, including making computer chips with plasma processing. Away from Earth, plasma is everywhere. The sun and all the stars are plasma as is the stuff between stars. Plasma is also the foundation of a source of virtually unlimited, clean energy if we can heat and confine a hydrogen plasma to the point that it will "burn" in a fusion reactor.

But our plasma is cold (the electrons are a frigid 10,000 Celsius) and we allow it to fill our vacuum chamber. It is something called a DC Glow Discharge.

Our plasma is made by removing the air from a glass container with a vacuum pump and then flowing a small amount of gas (Argon) into the chamber. We heat the gas with an electrical current (about 400 V, 1-2 mA) to create a plasma. Then we have neutral argon atoms, some free electrons, and some argon ions (neutral atoms that have lost an electron). To this mixture, we add some "dust" to create a dusty plasma.

So what is a dusty plasma and why do we care? I'll answer that in my next post. For now, here's a photo of one that also won an art competition a few years ago.

Look Mom, No Gravity!

2009-05-31T20:46:00.017-04:00

This Wednesday I head off to Houston for 10 days with a team of undergraduate students from The College of New Jersey. The seven students and I are part of NASA's Microgravity University and will perform a physics experiment in microgravity aboard the "Weightless Wonder." Here's a brief description of the program from their web site.

The Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program provides a unique academic experience for undergraduate students to successfully propose, design, fabricate, fly and evaluate a reduced gravity experiment of their choice. The reduced gravity aircraft generally flies 30 parabolic maneuvers over the Gulf of Mexico. This parabolic pattern provides about 30 seconds of hypergravity (about 1.8G-2G) as the plane climbs to the top of the parabola. Once the plane starts to “nose over” the top of the parabola to descend toward Earth, the plane experiences about 25 seconds of microgravity (0G). At the very top and bottom of the parabola, flyers experience a mix of partial G's between 0 and 1.8 (called “dirty air”).

This is the second year that students from TCNJ have flown an experiment (but the first time I get to join them!) and you can view a video on the project here: http://science-education.pppl.gov/NJNNews_26SEP08_micrograv.mov.

If you watched the video then you already know that I had an undergraduate student from TCNJ in my lab last year and I suggested that he look into applying to the Microgravity University. His proposal was accepted and the 2008 team had four members. They got decent data that we're submitting for publication. The 2009 team has two of the veterans (the other two graduated) and 5 new members. This time, NASA invited me to serve as their flight mentor and I get to participate in all of the training exercises and fly with the team.

Our flight is spread out over two days, June 11-12, and I fly on the 12th. With roughly 30 seconds of weightlessness and 30 parabolas, that's 15 minutes of floating around the plane! Before that, we have training and classes to get us ready and time to set up our experiment before we load it on the plane.

I will post something every day and discuss the experiment, the preparation, and of course what it feels like to float in microgravity!