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I saw on SpaceRef that the rocket with the student experiments onboard launched successfully! Hooray! And check it out — the online article has this picture:
Those are the people BABloggers helped get to the launch! The teacher is Pamela Ghaffarian, and the students are Billy Shannon (left) and Cameron Wade (right).
I haven’t heard back from Ms. Ghaffarian yet, but she promised a report when she could get one.’
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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June 8th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Congratulations to Billy and Cameron! And good work to all you readers who donated: the darn button was gone long before I ever got a chance to click it.
June 8th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
It’s a relief to hear good news like this!
June 8th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Woo! A rocket launch is a beautiful thing. Even moreso when it gives kids a chance to get hands-on involvement in science. Who knows, maybe one of these guys will end up working for NASA? Or in charge of it! The sky’s the limit when they have access to opportunities like this.
June 8th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Congratulations on the successful rocket launch. It goes to show that even with a political climate rife with scientific ignorance, and religious fundamentalism, there are truly inspiring stories such as this, to give all of us hope for the future.
On those moments that we may feel deflated or jaded from the anti-scientists, we can look back at moments like these and realize that we can truly make a difference. Perhaps one of these inquisitive kids will one day head NASA, and set right what once (or any number of times) went wrong.
June 9th, 2006 at 5:44 am
May those kids have so much fun with science that they want more, feel the need to share their excitement, and inspire others.
June 9th, 2006 at 5:53 am
Can anyone point me to a description of the experiments themselves?
June 9th, 2006 at 6:54 am
TR: see http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/14685940.htm
June 17th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
I would suggest that the students learned to create experiments with more peer review before finalizing the experiment. There are several different things that could have been done with nuts and bolts to understand what was going on. If they have ideas of new experiments on the same topic, it shows them that they need to really think out all the possible experiments they can do before rather than hoping to have another chance to do the experiment. It is a learning experience and they may never get another chance. That is why the professionals usually get things right; they always try to anticipate problems and to refine their experiments to handle the problems. Yes, I realize that these are elementary school kids, but that is what learning is all about.
CBS