Schools

Student: When We Had Trouble, We Could Ask NASA

Students present their NASA experiment to the board of education.

Not many people get to see a shuttle launched into space in person—but students at got to both see the launch of NASA’s final shuttle, and have their own experiment onboard.

“The space shuttle has been around for 30 years, it’s an American icon,” said high school science teacher Jorge Valdes. “Back in January, who would have ever thought we could do this?”

Students participated in a competition through NASA that chose 11 experiments to go up into space in the final shuttle launched in July, and they presented the results of the experiment at the Oct. 11 board of education meeting.

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“I love NASA and learning about the scientific process,” said student Joseph Avenoso at the board meeting. “It was very rewarding to see the shuttle go up. No one can take that away from us.”

Valdes explained that he received information about the to come up with an experiment that could be done on the shuttle. The challenge was to come up with an experiment that could look at a phenomenon with a physical, chemical or biological system to be explored in a microgravity environment for 10 to 14 days.

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“It’s very hard because there are a lot of constraints,” he said. “And the experiment had to fit in a little tube.”

The competition, Valdes said, was school-wide, and there were more than 300 projects submitted. He said many teachers used the competition as part of their laboratory classes.

From there, Valdes said, teachers chose the top three finalists, and sent those options to NASA, which made the final decision. Bridgewater, Valdes said, was one of 11 schools in the nation to fly experiments.

In the end, Valdes said, the experiment chosen was to look at the effect of microgravity on bone growth, and it was developed by students Avenoso, Adam Elwood, Rotem Herzberg, Alex Belly, Gage Cane-Wissing and Tejas Patel. Basically, Valdes said, the students wanted to determine if human growth hormones could be used to stimulate bone growth when in space.

“The motivation for this was that it has been a problem plaguing astronauts,” he said. “They lose 1.6 percent of bone mass every month they are in space, and eventually the bone deteriorates.”

“For every month in space, it takes two months to recuperate,” he added.

In addition to the science, Valdes said, the school held an art design competition to create a mission patch. A total of 10 were chosen, and students were able to vote for their favorite, which was then included on a purple t-shirt the students made to wear in Florida for the shuttle launch.

Once everything was ready, Valdes said, they packed up to go to Florida for the actual launch of the shuttle in July. In total, he said, 61 people attended from Bridgewater, namely 26 students, four teachers, 29 parents, one administrator and one 1986 alum.

“It was a big group that went down to Florida,” Valdes said. “Someone said there was a sea of purple because we were the largest contingency there.”

After watching the launch of the actual shuttle, Valdes said, the students attended a workshop at the Florida Institute of Technology where they had the chance to discuss their experiment. And Sunday, he said, they got to spend time at the Kennedy Space Center.

The shuttle landed July 21, Valdes said, and the school received the cells that were experimented on the next day. But 10 days later, he said, about 99.9 percent of the cells had died.

Fortunately, Valdes said, the students are working with a team of researchers at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey [UMDNJ].

“We’re working with a team of medical researchers, and we were able to feed the cells oxygen and nutrients and get them to come back to life,” he said. “There’s more to be done on the experiment.”

The cells are currently at UMDNJ, Valdes said.

“We went to UMDNJ in August with the students and teachers, and spent the day,” he said. “The kids got to see the cells in the medical research lab. It took a lot of people to make this a successful program.”

Valdes said he is very pleased with the outcome and the opportunity the students had.

“This is my second year, and I believe inspiration and education are linked,” he said. “I believe inspiration plays a really large role in education.”

“I teach because I deeply care about kids and because I believe kids are capable of extraordinary things. My job is to help them believe it as well.”

And next up, Valdes said, the students have been invited to Washington D.C. in July 2012 to present their work and findings.

Elwood said that although he has never been as into NASA as other students on the team, he does love science and learned a lot about scientific research through the process.

“My favorite quote of the whole experience was that when we were having trouble with something for NASA, we said, ‘we don’t know what to do, let’s call NASA,’” he said. “And we could actually do that.”


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