Cubes in Space – Student Space Experiments

Enabling authentic science or learning in any subject area is a real passion of mine. I want my students, and those in other classes to partake in learning that has true meaning and purpose whenever possible. Authentic learning hooks students (and adults for that matter) because it is REAL and students rightly believe that what they are doing has both real purpose and validity. You don’t find it in worksheets, most textbooks or in any one size fits all form of teaching with a teacher blah, blah blahing at the front of the room.

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Space science and project based learning have provided my students with fun, exciting and purposeful opportunities, and one that two groups of Mt Ousley students have participated in in 2014 and 2015 is the Cubes in Space (CiS) program.

CiS offers students across the globe an opportunity to send an investigation into space from NASA Langley Virginia on a sounding rocket. Yes… launch your idea… on a rocket with the help of NASA – very cool!

Here is the video of our 2014 launch.

Cool but challenging. The selected investigation had to be contained in a plastic cube container measuring approximately 40mmx 40mm x 40mm and weighing 30 grams or so.

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Last year my first group of students submitted an idea to test the effects of magnetism in a micro-g environment. It is important to remember this is the students investigation and their research, as the teacher I’ve helped with materials and roughing out ideas but I don’t discuss their hypothesis or any misconception – that would take the fun out of it! The students covered one side of the magnet with iron filings and the other side with iron filing covered in chalk dust. The idea being to see if there was any movement of the filings due to reduced magnetism in space.

So what happened? Well the school bought in to the idea and many families sat up late to watch the live launch of the Terrier rocket – exciting in its own right! The local paper got on board and shared the students’ journey. A month later the payload returned and it was opened and yes there was chalk dust everywhere – something had happened to move the dust but what? The students then realised the potential flaw as the dust could have spread during the flight over, during the shake test, during micro-g? or on return. So with a smile of the unsure, the results were inconclusive.

This year another group of students chose to submit the same investigation, this time using rusted filings on one side and normal on the other. The idea being the rust would hold and a better indication of movement would be measured. Again the school bought in, the launch was watched, and the payload was launched and recovered.

A month later the payload returned to our school and again the iron rust had spread throughout the case covering not only the filings but also everything else! Again, no result that could confirm or deny the students’ beliefs. That’s the great thing about science, you have to keep failing forward and I look optimistically to next year when our third group of students will have their opportunity to get hands-on and launch their idea.

Important CiS is accepting applications from October 12 from schools across the globe for 2016 sounding rocket and weather balloon launch opportunities.

So get your kids together and enjoy the challenges and rewards of authentic space science through the Cubes in Space program.