Integrated science teacher Ty Frederiks (center) and his Orcutt Academy students collected data from balloon-suspended sensors to monitor the weather during the school’s first-ever Balloon Festival on April 23 and 24. The students made projections about different weather components—temperature, atmospheric pressure—and then compared those hypotheses to the data they collected. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” said freshman Hayley John, whose group used a smaller balloon to measure barometric pressure. “We’ve gone through a lot of difficulties with our design, but it’s a lot of fun sending it up.”
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 7, 2009.