Incorporation of High-Altitude Balloon Experiment in High School Science Classrooms

High-altitude balloon is a balloon, filled usually with helium or hydrogen that ascends into an area called “near space” or stratosphere. The most common type of high-altitude balloons are weather balloons. Other purposes include use as a platform for experiments in the upper atmosphere. Modern balloons generally contain electronic equipment such as radio transmitters, cameras, or satellite navigation systems, such as GPS receivers.

The mission of the High-Altitude Balloon Experiment (HABE) is to acquire supporting data, validate enabling technologies, and resolve critical acquisition, tracking, and pointing (ATP) and fire control issues in support of future space-based precision pointing experiments. The use of high-altitude balloons offers a relatively low-cost, low-vibration test platform, a recoverable and reusable payload, worldwide launch capability, and a 'near- space' emulation of the future space systems operational scenarios.

More recently, several university educators reported that they have been adapting high-altitude balloon experiments for middle school and high school students. Launching a high-altitude balloon is fun and exciting. The authors of this paper introduced that they had been launching high-altitude balloons to engage students in science since 2013.

In this paper, they provided a brief discussion of their high-altitude balloon kit, the typical data collected by their system, and discussed how the high-altitude balloon experiment had been used to engage students in specific chemistry topics using inquiry-based learning, as well as constructing knowledge using the collected data from the balloon launch.

Through their experience interacting with high school students, the authors have found that the high-altitude balloon experiment is an effective tool for inquiry-based learning to introduce chemistry topics including gas properties, elements and molecules, heat capacity, thermochemistry, electromagnetic radiation, bond breaking and formation, and atmospheric chemical reactions. Examples are given to demonstrate how to incorporate the experiment in high school science classrooms.

In conclusion, through their interactions with high school teachers and students, they have found that we can enhance the impact of the high-altitude balloon experiment by incorporating the project into science classrooms.

Article by Stephen Cheng, et al, from Canada.

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Image by Menlo School, from Flickr-cc.