ERIC Number: EJ891967
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007-Feb
Pages: 5
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0031-921X
EISSN: N/A
Thank You for Flying the Vomit Comet
Dempsey, Robert; DiLisi, Gregory A.; DiLisi, Lori A.; Santo, Gretchen
Physics Teacher, v45 n2 p75-79 Feb 2007
This paper describes our flight aboard NASA's C9 "Weightless Wonder," an aircraft that creates multiple periods of microgravity by conducting a series of parabolic maneuvers over the Gulf of Mexico. Because passengers often develop motion sickness during these parabolic maneuvers, the C9 is more affectionately known as the "Vomit Comet." To celebrate the 2005 World Year of Physics, AAPT, APS, and NASA co-sponsored a contest in which teams of high school students and their mentors could fly an experiment aboard the Vomit Comet. If selected, students would develop their experiment and travel to Houston to serve as "ground crew" while the mentors would actually fly aboard the C9 to perform the experiment.
Descriptors: Scientific Concepts, Science Instruction, Motion, High School Students, Secondary School Science, Science Experiments, Mentors, Scientific Principles, Air Transportation, Aviation Technology
American Association of Physics Teachers. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740. Tel: 301-209-3300; Fax: 301-209-0845; e-mail: pubs@aapt.org; Web site: http://scitation.aip.org/tpt
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: High Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A