High-Level Project Summary
We have a developed a cheap, easy-to-make high-altitude balloon to be used as a baseline and a course built around this balloon where students can get first hand experience going through the process of desgining and carrying out a high-altitude balloon experiment. It solves the challenge by providing students with a base balloon they can build off of and then gives them free reign over how they will use the design, whether by modifying or building the design as is. It also allows for hands-on experience with designing a balloon experiment, procuring the materials for it, building the balloon and carrying the experiment out. It is important because of how it gives guidance and freedom.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
What is our project?
Our project contains a cheaper theoretical balloon design and a lesson plan to teach students how to make a balloon to measure atmospheric data amateurishly.
How do we do it?
Latex will be the material which forms the body of the balloon. At first, the value of pressure which can be handled by balloon can be easily measured by putting the balloon in a vacuumed bell shaped glass cover and pumping air into the balloon.
After finding out the value of pressure, ideal gas law (PV=nRT) can be used to find out the amount of gas to fill the balloon with. (The temperature of the weather will have to be predicted. This prediction can be made using the meteorological data from a government resource.) Helium gas is the ideal gas because it is both safe and functional.
A barometer, a metal whose expansion coefficient value is high, a camera which is far from the metal in a certain value, a hygrometer and electrical devices to save and send data to the school will be placed on this balloon.
For students to make this balloon, a course will be created where they will learn the fundamentals of high-altitude balloon experiments, which will provide them with the engineering knowledge and skill needed to create a functioning high-altitude balloon and design a valid experiment for the balloon to carry out.
The course will begin with the importance and current usage of high-altitude balloons in scientific studies. They will learn which fields of science have benefited from these experiments and how. The next subject matter will be a quick rundown of the difficulties of preparing such experiments. After this overview, the students will begin hands-on learning with putting together a high-altitude balloon, with the first task being procuring the required materials.
The students will need to decide on the best provider among the ones presented by the course instruction and instructors, and then have the materials they need will be provided to them. After this process, the students will begin the process of engineering the balloon based on the guidelines given to them. They will be assisted by their instructors if needed, but it will be encouraged that the students try to do by themselves as much as they can.
While in the process of designing this balloon, students will also have to come up with the experiment this balloon will do. They will need to prepare an experiment paper in which the purpose, means, and process of the experiment will be defined clearly. They will have to keep the balloon’s capabilities in mind while also modifying the design to accommodate the planned experiment if needed.
After an estimated process of several months, the students will launch their experiment and see the performance of the balloon. With the end of the experiment, they will be required to write a report detailing how the experiment panned out and what data has been gained from. Finally, they will write reflection paper explaining how they felt during this course and they think they have gained from it.
Why do we do it?
We want to bring space and knowledge to our schools and show that the space is not that far. Also these kind of projects will expand the students’ horizons about how space is researched and how science can be done in ways that they have not thought about.
What did we learn?
We gained some academical skills such as running down the resources and turning and idea into a theory, however, mostly importantly, we realised the meaning of being a team member and socially supporting each other. This project also helped us develop our planning skills while discussing how the course should be.
What are we planning to do next?
We are planning to make a design of the suggested base balloon using some 3D design applications and making a protype of this balloon. We want to find the perfect locating formation for measuring devices and integrate parachute to the base balloon design.
Space Agency Data
We have searched several different activities conducted by NASA and other space agencies along with other information about high-altitude balloons and analyzed what high-altitude balloons are used for in the current age. This research lead to us realizing that high-altitude balloon experiments are much more important than we initially assumed, which in turn caused us to understand that if we were planning to create a lesson plan to teach students about near space balloon experiments and have them make one themselves, we would need to first make them understand why near-space balloons are important. This is what inspired us to create the first stage of the course, where students learn about how these balloons are useful for many fields of science today.
Hackathon Journey
Our Space Apps experience was amazing. We have already been interested in space. So we are really happy and thankful for participating this event. We have always wanted to build something that is able to go into space so this project was the one which has the closest subject to our passion. We had a lot of different problems but we managed to get to this point by solving our problems as a team. There are some points that we have lackings, however, this team managed to get to this point and we all believe that we will go further. We would like to appreciate to organisers of this event, our teachers and mentors.
References
INTERNAL LINKS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdomWPu8cvg
https://www.nasa.gov/scientificballoons
https://www.csbf.nasa.gov/balloons.html
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/explorers_balloons.html
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-mission-will-study-the-cosmos-with-a-stratospheric-balloon
EXTERNAL LINKS
https://www.mgm.gov.tr/genel/sss.aspx?s=ravinsonde
https://bilimgenc.tubitak.gov.tr/makale/hava-durumu-balonlari-nasil-calisir
https://teknolojiprojeleri.com/teknik/hava-durumu-balonlari-nasil-calisir
https://www.pexels.com/tr-tr/
https://pixabay.com/tr/
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.