Science NIE ACTIVITY Science Matters!

is a series presented in
collaboration with the Connecticut Academy of
Science and Engineering and the Connecticut
Science Center.
For more information, visit www.courantnie.com
… IN CONNECTICUT or call 860.241.3847.

The Sky is Falling?! DID YOU KNOW?

Many man-made satellites that are circling the earth
If you look up at the sky, day or night, it’s
a very peaceful sight; birds flying, clouds can be seen at night. And one of the brightest is the
floating by or stars shining. But there is International Space Station. Because of the size and
something else up there in orbit around the the orbit, it can easily be seen from Connecticut at
Earth, which poses a problem. It’s space junk. certain times. For March, the ISS will be a morning object, flying
Space junk is stuff that ranges in size from
over
er around 6:00 am. But in the beginning
tiny particles of paint from shuttle missions,
to huge rocket boosters left over from rocket of April, it will be visible in the sky around
launches. Since the force of gravity is very 9:00 pm. The best way to find out when the
small in low earth orbit, and the atmosphere ISS and other satellites will pass over is by
up there is too thin to have an effect, these checking out
things take a long time to come back down to http://www.heavens-above.com/.
earth. There is still Apollo era stuff (1960s)
floating around up there. When recently completing my Science Fair project, I found that my results
provided a foundational knowledge for experimenting with the success of
One way space junk becomes a problem, is composting. After testing two biodegradable materials in order to see which
when it falls back to Earth. The little things would create the healthiest compost, I found that vegetable wastes are best
are not a problem; they burn up relatively
at speeding decomposition and increasing the worm population
popu
po pu within the
quickly in the atmosphere. When bigger
soil. The importance of this project lies in the
he
things fall, there is more matter to melt, so they sometimes make it to the ground. These
modern world’s attempt to reduce depletion on
objects burn up because of ram pressure, not due to friction caused by the atmosphere.
Ram pressure happens because the objects are moving so fast it causes the air to compress of earth’s resources because, if everyone were re
in front of it, causing the air to heat up, and that melts the object. to compost, we would not only be giving back ck
to the environment but minimizing the damage ge
You don’t have to worry about things falling from space and hitting you on the head as done by our many wastes.
you are walking down the street. The actual chance of you getting hit by a falling piece of
-Nicholas Serrambana, na,,
na
satellite is one-in-one hundred-trillion; you have a better chance of getting hit by lighting
Grade 8, Classical Magnet School, Hartford rd
more than once. These space objects would most likely fall into the ocean since our planet
is 70% water, like Russia’s Phobos-grunt satellite did earlier this year.
So if there is all this space junk floating around the planet, does it cause a problem for
DIG
DIG INTO
INTO SCIENCE
SCIENCE
space travelers? The answer is yes. Imagine a flake of paint traveling at 24,000 miles per …and experiment!
hour hitting your spacecraft. It would cause a major problem. NORAD has to track the
largest pieces. It lets the space station crew know when a piece is coming towards them Mini Experiment
so they can move it out of the way if necessary. NASA is trying to find a way to clear out
Boil an egg. When it’s cool, peel off the shell.
this junk to make it safer for future generations of space travelers and satellites.
Get a small-neck bottle, light a match and place
To learn more about launching satellites and people into space visit the Exploring Space it in the bottle. Let it burn for a few seconds
Gallery at the CT Science Center. and then place the egg on top.
What do you think will happen to the egg?
MEET THE SCIENTIST
Robert Wilkos Why do you think this happened?
Robert Wilkos is an astrophysicist, someone who studies the physics of the universe. Remember that hot things expand and cool
His areas of research include comets, star formation, eclipsing binary stars, white things contract. What do you think is expanding ingg
dwarf rotation and white dwarf pulsation. and contracting? (Hint, it’s not the bottle or the
he
For students who are blind, learning disabled or print challenged, visit CRIS Radio at
egg!)
http://www.chrisradio.org and click Kids On-Demand for a free audio version of Science Matters. To get the egg out, blow gently into the bottle,e,
but be careful. The egg might come out really
fast and you don’t want to get hit.
Next Page: March 30th