To all SSEP Mission 16 student microgravity researchers, just before his return to Earth on Soyuz 33S, on May 13, 2013, Expedition 35 International Space Station Commander and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield – the first Canadian to walk in space –released this video. Watch Chris (and his guitar) and see what weightlessness looks like. When watching this movie you’re invited to go to full screen on your computer and turn up the volume – maybe even project it on a large screen in a classroom and turn off the lights.
To all SSEP Mission 16 to ISS Community Program Directors: this Challenge is covered as part of the program start Professional Development videoconference for your community’s Local Team of educators. These videoconferences are being conducted by SSEP National Program Director Dr. Jeff Goldstein.
This blog post is for teachers in the 24 communities across the U.S., Canada and Ukraine that just started SSEP Mission 16 to ISS on September 1, 2021. 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 16 students across the U.S., Canada, and Ukraine 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 Monday, September 20, 2021.
I’ve heard a lot about this weightlessness stuff, with astronauts having a great time floating around in space. I’ve even seen astronauts on YouTube videos and in movies (like Chris above), and they’re floating as if they weigh nothing at all. It just seems like maybe there is just no gravity in space? I really need to find out 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’m going to look far and wide to find an amazingly tall mountain whose peak rises to the Space Station’s altitude in orbit. My plan is to climb to the top of this mountain, look really fast in the big window on the Space Station (it’s called the cupola) as Station flies by my face, and see for myself if the astronauts are floating around.
The Space Station orbits the Earth close to 260 miles (420 km) above sea level, so that’s how high my mountain needs to be. 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. So I’m going to look in that window really really fast!
OK, 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 the Space Station flies by, so I can look in the window and see if those lucky astronauts are weightless and floating around.
Here now the challenge to YOU—
So here I am on the top of my mountain, and the Space Station just flew by – Hey! They WERE floating around, and appeared totally weightless, just like Chris in the video above! They seem to have no gravity at all! They’re not being pulled down to the floor – in fact there doesn’t seem to be a floor … or a ceiling!
On top of my mountain, at the exact same altitude above Earth as the astronauts (I’m at the exact same location in space as they are), I now 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 anything. Your assignment—if you decide to accept it—is to just 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 few days to noodle on this in class, and maybe at home with your parents. I’ll post the answer Monday, September 20, 2021, right here at the SSEP National Blog. See you then, and good luck noodling!
Also – if you want to get an email notification when that Blog Post is up, and 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 will be posted here on September 20, 2021.
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, which is 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 if you are in less gravity, you will weigh less, since there is less force pushing you down to the surface. You might weigh approximately 1/5 lighter on the moon than you would on the surface of the earth. In space, there is no gravity, so you would most likely weigh nothing at all.
I think that when there is less gravity, your mass is still the same but you weigh less. This because your weight is determined by the force of gravity, so when there is less gravity, you will have less weight.
I think that your weight will change in the lighter direction because of the sense of gravity. Gravity normally is what keeps you on the ground, but if you are on the top of a mountain and especially in space, the rules don’t necessarily apply in that case. There is definitely less or no gravity, therefore, you will weigh a little or a lot less then you would ground level on earth.
I think your weight will be less if you’re up on a mountain since you’re higher up in the air with less gravity. Being higher up closer to space will decrease your actual weight. If you were lower on the ground then, compared by in space, you’d be heavier.
i think you weigh the same everywhere but once you leave the atmosphere you are still 150 pounds but you feel like you weigh nothing.
you weigh a little less on top of mountains.
I think you would weigh less if your weighing yourself in space because there´s no gravity forcing you down like if you were on earth.
because there is less gravity when you are higher up
You will be lighter in space then in earth because in space there is no gravity
You weigh wont change because just cause your higher up from the ground does mean free falling which is why your weigh wont change.
your weight won’t change because nothing changes expect for how high you are up from the ground so your weight won’t change
If you were on top of a mountain and you weighed yourself you would only weigh a lot less because your more higher on the mountain and that causes you to put less pressure on the ground and this will happen because of gravity.
I think you would weigh the same because you might think you are weightless on the mountain but really you are free falling.
If you weigh at 150 pounds when you stand at the top of the mountain, you would be essentially weightless and weigh nothing at all, as you are located in outer space and there is an absence of gravity. The formula mass x gravity = weight indicates that since there is no gravity in space, you would not weigh anything at all and would be 0 pounds.
If you weigh 150 pounds on the ground you will only weigh a little less on the mountain due to how high up you are.
You will be lighter on the top of the mountain because when you higher up into the atmosphere, you feel a feeling of free falling and will be lighter.
If you weigh 150 pounds on earth then weigh yourself in space you will weigh zero because there is no gravity.
if you weigh 150lbs. your weight will decrease by a couple of pounds because of how high your are but their won’t be a dramatic decrease in your weight.
You will weigh less because the higher up you are on a mountain the closer you are to space and there is no gravity in space so there is less gravity at the top of a mountain then there is on Earth.
You will weigh less because the higher up you are on a mountain the closer you are to space and there is no gravity in space so there is less gravity at the top of a mountain then there is on Earth.
Your weight will be less because there is a less gravitational pull up on the mountain so the force being pulled down is less.
You weigh less when you are higher up because higher up is closer to space where there is no gravity.
Your weight will be lighter because the higher up you go the less gravity pulls you down to the Earth.
You will weigh less because you are closer to space and space has no gravity. Since the mountain is close to space the gravitational pull will be less. This means you would weigh less. You would weigh the same and will feel like you are weightless.
You would weigh less if you were at the top of a mountain because higher up in the sky is closer to space which is way less gravity. There is less gravity at the top of a mountain than there is on earth.
The mountain is so high up that you would weigh less than if you were at the foot of the mountain. There is no to little gravity up there, causing you to way 0 or close to 0 pounds
You will weigh less because the more you are higher on a mountain the closer you are to space and there is microgravity in space so there is less gravity at the top of a mountain then on space/
The higher you are the less weight you can feel.
You will weigh less. This is because there is less gravity and force pushing you down when you go so high up. But you can feel weightless because there is barely any gravity since your high up on top of a mountain.
I think that you would weigh less on the mountain than you would at a normal level. This is because while traveling farther from the Earth’s surface, the gravitational pull that’s keeping you on Earth is decreasing.
You will weigh less because the higher up you are on a mountain the less gravity there is.
You will weigh less because you are higher up than you are in your bathroom. The higher you go the less you weigh.
You will weigh less because the higher you are you have microgravity. When you have microgravity you appear to be weightless. So therefor you would weigh less.
You would weigh less, because the higher you are the closer you are to where microgravity is, and microgravity is in space.
I think that you will weigh just a little less on top of the mountain because there would be less gravity there which means there is less pulling you down so you would weigh less.
When you are in an environment with less gravity, your mass will be the same but you will weigh less. This is because your weight is determined by the force of gravity, so when there is less gravity, you have less weight.
You will weigh less because there is less gravity in high elevations, like on a mountain. There is also little to no gravitational pull up on a mountain and in space, so you may feel like you are weightless.
I think that you would weigh less because there is an attraction that is pulling the people and the space station to the guy checking his weight.
I think you will weigh less.You will weigh there is less gravity at the top of a mountain then the bottom. so you will weigh little to no pounds up there.
As you elevate up your weight would get lower. This is because when or if you would be on top of a mountain there is less gravity because you are that high up. There is less gravity as you get higher up towards space, But you could also feel like your weightless but weigh the same as you did when you weren’t that high.
The higher you are the less weight and the lower you are the more weight
You are going to weigh less if there is less gravity pushing you down. When there is pressure on you, you will weigh more. So, if you’re on top of a mountain, you will weigh less.
I think that you’d weigh less since there is less gravity the higher you go. So i think that you’d weigh either nothing or almost nothing
You would way less because when you are high up you are farther away from the gravity.
You will weigh less because there is less gravity from how high you are.
I think you would way zero pounds cause the higher your up the less you way.
You would weigh very slightly less at the top of a mountain, not enough for you to notice, but a measurable amount. Gravitational pull, and therefore weight, is lower on a mountain than at sea level. But your mass does not change.
I think you would weigh less because at the top of the mountain there is less gravity so you apply less pressure to the scale then u would on the ground.
I think you would weigh 150 pounds, how much you weigh wouldn’t change just what the scale said would change.
I think your weight will be lighter because the higher off of the earth you are, the less gravity there is to pull you back down.
You will weigh less because the higher up you are on a mountain the less gravity there is.