What I Learned!
The Launch
Wow. What an experience this project has been from start to finish. I guess technically we are not even at finish yet. Last week was a whirlwind of activity as we prepared for, launched and tracked down our weather balloon. The students also had a tour of the CARE facility in Ebert. All in all we could not have asked for things to have gone better. Or could we…..
Preparation
The students will be outlining our preparation in their blogs. They did a great job making sure we had everything. And I’m still sorry we scared them by loading in the car what we said would be on the bus. They thought we had left everything behind!
Some hints for preparing/packing:
-have a list (down the most minute detail)
-pack in tubs or bins that are organized (e.g., have the things for the payload in one tub, tools in another)
-ask for others to look at the list – the students and I and Mr. Young all worked on the list… this made sure nothing was forgotten
-double and triple check – you can never be too careful!
Launch Day
We had been running predictors right up until the last moment which added to my nervousness as we were predicted to land much closer to urban Oshawa than before. But no turning back now, the bus was coming! On the launch morning Mr. Young and I did some final checks and loading. This is where we accidentally loaded the car instead of the bus and scared the students. Sorry guys!
The bus left with 15 happy and excited grade sixes and Mr. Young and I followed in our car. All was going according to plan. After an hour or so we arrived at the CARE centre.
The students all had assigned roles and they got to work right away. As soon as Mr. Young and Liisa (CARE centre scientist) decided on our location, the students began unpacking our equipment and laying it out carefully. It was a beautiful day, if a bit windy.
Organization was key here as we needed to be able to easily grab our equipment at the right time.
Things started to move quickly here with many students performing several important jobs at the same time. We checked the weather, ran a prediction, filmed, and set off a party balloon test. All while Mr. Young and Arthika worked hard to double check our payload equipment and seal up the box.
Soon it was time to begin filling the balloon.
One thing we learned while filling the balloon was that it requires several adults, or at least taller students, as it gets quite large and difficult to hold. The wind made this job harder as well. Our student balloon guiders did a great job, but when the balloon got to a certain size it was too big for them to hold easily.
Up, up and away!
Check out our twitter feed (@MissHarperclass) for the full periscope video of our launch. The balloon took off without a hitch and we could see it for quite some time in the sky. It was wonderful to see so many months of hard work come together.
Chasing Down the Balloon
I will leave it up to the student blogs to share with you about the tour as Mr. Young and myself let soon after to go hunt down our balloon. The students and Mrs. Simons all said they enjoyed the tour and “it was interesting to learn so much about science”.
Thankfully the SPOT GPS seemed to be doing its job well and with me driving and Mr. Young navigating we had no trouble tracking down the payload just north of Brooklin. The problem came when we realized where it was……….
This was going to pose a fairly significant problem. We had spent lots of time thinking about what would happen if it landed in water, on a road or in someone’s backyard. We did not spend enough time pondering tree removal.
After some hiking through the forest following Mr. Young’s trusty GPS tracker we found the package right where it should be…. only 40 feet up a tree. Nothing we could think of would get it down. The tree was too tall to climb, we couldn’t cut it down and shaking it did not work.
Alas, we had to leave our payload behind. On the way back to Brampton, Mr. Young made many phone calls to tree services while I drove. He eventually hooked up with Chuck, The Tree Guy who had climbing gear and agreed to help us. Thanks Chuck! Our payload was removed from the tree Saturday morning (two days after it landed) and amazingly Lacy was still attached!
Where we go from here……
Tomorrow morning we will open our payload and see if our cameras worked. I am very excited to see our footage and all the data we accumulated…..
Peel21st Project 188 