Note that this Challenge is covered as part of the program start Skype for your community’s Local Team of Mission 11 educators. These Skypes for the Mission 11 communities are being conducted by SSEP National Program Director Dr. Jeff Goldstein through Wednesday, September 21, 2016.
This blog post is for teachers in the 21 communities across the U.S. and Canada that just started SSEP Mission 11 to ISS. You are invited to use this Challenge with your students to get them thinking about the concept of microgravity (the technical name for the phenomenon of ‘weightlessness’). As part of this Challenge, students are asked to submit what they think is an answer in the ‘Leave a Reply’ section below. Please encourage your students to submit answers, so that all students visiting this blog post can see what other Mission 11 students across the U.S. and Canada are thinking. Let’s use this blog post as a social media platform for sharing thoughts about microgravity.
The solution to the Challenge will be posted to this SSEP National Blog on Wednesday, September 21, 2016.
I’ve heard a lot about this weightlessness stuff, with astronauts having a great time floating around in space. It’s like they weigh nothing at all. So I wanted to find out first hand what’s going on up there. Since they don’t have a spare seat on the next flight to low Earth orbit (at least not yet), I looked far and wide to find an amazingly tall mountain whose peak rises to the Space Station’s altitude in orbit so I could climb up and see for myself.
Station orbits the Earth close to 260 miles (420 km) above sea level, and, by the way, crew and station are zipping along at 4.7 MILES PER SECOND (7.6 km/sec) relative to you sitting there at your computer. Bam. The Station just moved 4.7 miles. Really.
It took some Googling, but I found that really tall mountain! See my mountain in the picture? It accidentally got captured in an old Space Shuttle photo. Mt. Everest is only 5.5 miles (8.8 km) high. MY mountain (Jeff’s Peak) is 260 miles (420 km) high. I found it south of the Land of Make-Believe, down a not too well traveled path. Still, you’d think someone would have noticed it since it’s 47 times higher than Mt. Everest. (Have you ever heard of Jeff’s peak? No? See, nobody knows about it!)
So this week, I’m going to take the time to climb my mountain, and in my hand is my trusty bathroom scale, spring-loaded and guaranteed to be accurate at any altitude. I’ll camp out at the top, and I’ll wait until Space Station flies right by my mountain, so I can look in the windows and see if those lucky astronauts are weightless and floating around.
Here now the challenge—
As soon as I confirm they’re weightless in the Space Station, I’ll step on my bathroom scale to see my weight. If I weigh say 150 lbs when I’m standing on my scale in my bathroom at home, what will I weigh on top of my mountain?
Hint: You don’t actually need to calculate my weight. I’ll do that in the Solution to the Challenge. Your assignment—if you decide to accept it—is to guess what you think I’ll weigh and why. Hmmmm, lots of possibilities.
Submit your guesses below in the ‘Leave a Reply’ section, and remember to include why you think your guess is correct. Students of ALL ages are welcome to post a guess.
I’ll even give you a week to noodle on this in class, and at home with your parents. I’ll post the answer next Wednesday, September 21, 2016, right here at the SSEP National Blog. See you then, and good luck noodling!
Also – if you want to follow along with the latest news from the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP), you are invited to subscribe to the SSEP National Blog at the bottom of the right column.
[**Metric system note: in the metric system, weight is measured in Newtons (N). 150 lbs is equivalent to 667 Newtons, which is the weight of a 68 kg mass at Earth’s surface.]
The solution to this challenge was posted here on September 21, 2016.
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) is a program of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in the U.S., and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education internationally. It is enabled through a strategic partnership with NanoRacks LLC, working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory. SSEP is the first pre-college STEM education program that is both a U.S. national initiative and implemented as an on-orbit commercial space venture.
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), and Subaru of America, Inc., are U.S. National Partners on the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program. Magellan Aerospace is a Canadian National Partner on the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program.
I think that you would weigh 135 pounds.
i think you would weigh less than you way now on the mountain because if the ashtronouts were floating then you would to
I think that your weight would stay the same because the gravitational pull lifts you up to space at exactly 260 miles off the ground when the gravitational pull actually lifts you
so maby 6 lbs at least because its microgravety.
I think you weigh half.
I think you would weigh the same amount as on earth
I think he will weigh about 20 pounds.
I think he will weigh 110 lbs
I think he will weigh the same
I think that if you way 150 pounds on sea level, he will wight 120 pounds because he is still in a gravitational pull on the top of his mountain, but will weigh less that what he does on regular ground.
I believe he will be about 50 pounds.
I believe that he will weigh about 100 pounds.
I think he would weigh about, 80 pounds
I believe that you would way at least 100 pounds.
I think you will weigh about 125 pounds, because you are still connected to the ground, which technically means you’re still on the ground. but you are still floating a tiny bit, so your weight would still decrease a tiny bit. So that’s why my answer is about 125 pounds.
80 pounds maybe :l
I think that her will weight around 20-30 pounds
I think your weight will decrease because you are near space. My guess is that you will weigh 110 or 120.
80 pounds maybe
I think it will be 1/4 of his weight since the gravity in space is less than Earth’s gravity
I think he will wheigh 0 pounds
I think he will weigh 50 pounds because I think that on his mountain when you weigh yourself on his mountain it will be minus 100 pounds because he is really high in the air on an even level with the astronauts so I think he will weigh 50 pounds because he weighs 150 pounds on sea level.
i think he’ll weigh
107 pounds
i think the person will be the same height in space because there zero gravity in space and you can float and the gravity is helping us from floating on earth
i think the person in space will be the same height because theres zero gravity in space and gravity helps us from floating in the air.
You would be the same weight just you would be in microgravity so you feel and look weightless.
I think that your weight would get heavier when you were climbing up to the top but when you broke Earth’s atmosphere, you would become weightless because Earth’s atmosphere keeps the oxygen in the Earth and that’s why we survive on this planet. It also makes sure that nothing that could potentially kill has a high chance of coming and destroying our planet. The atmosphere gets heavier the higher you climb. If you’ve seen those movies where when a spaceship breaks Earth’s atmosphere, it’s on fire because it’s so heavy at the top, and that’s why it would take longer to climb this mountain the higher climb. This is my evidence for why it would be hard to climb the mountain, but after Earth’s atmosphere, you would become weightless.
i think it is 0.05kg
I think you would weight 64 pounds
I think that you would weight 16% less than what you would weight on earth
I agree with Evan!!
I think you will stay the same weight. I think that because you need to be fast enough to break earth’s gravitational pull and then you float because rocket ships are faster then any human that’s how they get in to space and the people in it are able to float.
I think you will way a little less since your so close to the earths atmosphere that if you jumped it may be posible you will float a little bit that you wont reconise.
I believe that your weight will slowly decreases as you make your journey up your mountain, and to prove, this the top of the mountain is bursting though the clouds and out the atmosphere. Good luck climbing that mountain
I think you will way a little less because you are so close to the earths atmosphere that if you jumped you may float for a little but wont notice.
I think you would weigh 0 pounds because there is microgravity
I think that your weight would shrink to a smaller number because when you are in space, your weight would decrease.
I think that you will gain weight because you are floating around in non-gravity for months and not as active as you are on earth
I think you would be 0 pounds because there would be no gravity to pull you down towards the ground or surface.
I think that you’ll weigh at least half because of microgravity.
I think you weight would less if you were in space then If you were on earth.
I think you would weigh less because of the micro gravity
I think you would weigh the same
I think you will weigh the same because gravity is still pulling you down. You are still on Earth. In the same gravitational pole whether you are up there or not.
I think that You would still weigh a little bit at the top of that mountain. I think this because (I may be wrong,) In space, if you just float there idly, you will be pulled to something slowly by micro gravity, therefore, on the top of that mountain, you would not be completely weightless, even though you might feel like it.
I think that I won’t feel weightless because I am still on earth surface. I picture the field of gravity a blanket that covers earth so just because your high altitude doesn’t mean that it is s
Weightless.
I think your weight will decrease because you are on a mountain that has less gravity.
I think that he will be 90 pounds
I think that you going to weight less then you weight now.
I think he will be 20 pounds lighter
he will stay 150 pounds
I think that he would be weightless because the Earth’s gravity is pulling you down while you are on the mountain.