Anasphere, Inc. spent an hour and a half of every day the entire week of June 9th-13th with 16 wonderful students at the Montana State University Peaks & Potentials Workshop. Brianna, John, Tom and Brittany were all integral parts in making this event happen. The event began with a discussion of what an AnaSonde is, weather, atmosphere layers, and why it is important that we learn about the earth's atmosphere. The students were divided into groups of four and were given the tools to create a lightning demo for the rest of the class. Then students learned natural ways to predict the weather along with how to predict the weather based on the clouds present in the atmosphere. The students were able to predict the weather for later that day with amazing accuracy!
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the students soldered on the parts to build the AnaSonde Buzz-Es after a mini Jeopardy game to determine who would get to build the one that we would fly. Then, they played with the instrument in microclimates a little, but we were not able to really get into it too much because of time constraints. On Thursday, the students got a Morse code key to help them to decode the temperatures that the Buzz-Es were sending back to them. They even wrote each other secret messages in code!
On Friday, we flew! The kids had a blast taking the real time data so that they could graph it later. They were very curious and asked great questions about the AnaSonde! Afterward, we discussed what was happening in the atmosphere and went over atmosphere layers and what happens in each layer again. From this, knowing that there was no right or wrong answer, the each student came to their own conclusion on which layer is most important, why they thought that way, and how this type of research is important to their layer. The students had a great time, and so did we. We hope to be at MSU Peaks & Potentials again next year!
Anasphere, Inc. is very excited to have hosted its first outreach activity with members of the local 4-H community. Activities on Saturday afternoon began with a short discussion on weather, clouds in particular. Various questions were proposed such as: How are clouds formed? What things are needed in order for a cloud to form? What types of weather come from clouds? Brianna and Janet then provided a short and simple demonstration on cloud formation. They were actually able to form a cloud in the classroom! Here is the cloud formation activity (pdf).
Following the cloud discussion, students received a brief "how to" on soldering. By the end of the day, the students completed two AnaSondes by themselves. Each student was able to solder 3-4 parts, including a temperature sensor, pressure sensor, humidity sensor, LED, and an on/off switch onto the small circuit boards. In addition to soldering, students were responsible for constructing the parachute. While two students were soldering, the remaining students constructed the parachute, and completed a weather-based web search (pdf) and weather word games from http://education.arm.gov. Rotation of these positions allowed all eight students to participate in soldering, the web search, and the weather word games. These activities helped introduce the trends and profiles we were hoping to see on our own launch like decreasing temperature and pressure with height. In addition, we introduced the use of radio frequency and its many uses, such as our data collection during the AnaSonde flight.
For the launch, the students filled a large party balloon with helium and attached the parachute, the AnaSonde, and a 9-Volt battery to the balloon. The AnaSonde communicates the data it collects via radio transmissions. We were able to listen to the Morse code data before we connected the hand-held radio to the computer. Our balloon reached an altitude of 10,380 feet before we ran out of time and had to pack up. Here is the data we collected (pdf).