Two massive weather balloons struggled against their tethers at either end of Stutler Field in the chilly morning hours of Oct. 23, ready to take their flight into the atmosphere.
Crowds of students gathered under each of the inflated spheres, carefully securing harnesses and double-checking the scientific experiments that would make their way into near space. On one end of the field, students from Belleview Elementary made last-minute examinations of experiments that tested questions of pressure, biology and chemistry. On the other, students from Cherry Creek High School made sure their experiments designed to measure the speed of sound and the effect of the flight on temperature and humidity were ready to launch.
Though the two groups differed in age, their commitment to uncovering scientific answers was the same.
“This is an excellent collaboration between elementary and secondary in timing their balloon launches,” said Jon Pierce, Elementary STEM and Innovation Coordinator for Cherry Creek Schools. Pierce stood on the 50 yard line of the Stutler field after both balloons had been released, and reflected on the first-ever simultaneous launch by two different levels of aspiring scientists. “It’s fantastic. When we first started doing balloon launches, we scaled down experiments being conducted by graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology so fifth-graders could do it. Now, we’re walking it back up so we can see what high school students can do.”
The launch on Oct. 23 was hardly the first time that Cherry Creek School District students had conducted a similar experiment. For the past several years, hundreds of elementary classes have launched experiments lashed to a weather balloon and carefully analyzed the results. These interactive, immersive lessons closely align with the district’s overall commitment to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) curriculum, as well as the overall Instructional Excellence priority in Cherry Creek Future Forward, the district’s roadmap to maintaining excellence.
However, the joint effort this week marked the first collaboration between elementary and high school science students. What’s more, the teams dedicated to actually launching the balloon had a rapt audience: the entire student body of Belleview Elementary sat on the grass and watched as the experiments lifted into the sky, one after the other.
“We had about 60 kids sign up for individual jobs to help bring this together, but the entire fifth grade had input and helped with analysis. This is a project that our students look forward to,” said Sandra Ramirez, science teacher at Belleview. “We do data analysis from previous balloon launches, and once we complete it, the fifth-graders get so excited. They know data analysis is what college students do. Today, they can look to the high school students and see that advanced STEM is attainable, and that they’re capable of building those scaffolds to higher learning.”
From the high school perspective, the dual launch offered students the chance to serve as scientific role models, even as it provided a real-life lab to test theories, analyze data and draw advanced conclusions.
“It makes all of these complex lessons real,” said Keith Harrison, physics and robotics teacher at Cherry Creek High School. Harrison added that students would retrieve the fallen balloons later that day and start carefully parsing the results. “This is a chance to put learning into action.”
After the two balloons had floated out of sight, after the applause had died down and the students headed for the exits, Belleview fifth-graders Quinton Turner and Ryder Mordecai lingered on the grass. They spoke excitedly about the event – what went well with the launch, what was unexpected and what was the most impressive about seeing science in action.
Mordecai, who’d been on hand to watch a similar event last year, couldn’t hide his enthusiasm.
“It was a lot better than last year,” he noted. “It was really cool to see two launch at once.”
— Submitted by Adam Goldstein, digital communications specialist for the Cherry Creek School District.