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Students knowledge inflates with balloon launch
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.The weather balloon was launched into the air by eight eight-grade Austintown Middle School STEM students on May 12.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.Austintown Middle School STEM students started to raise the weather balloon before allowing it to float into the air for the balloon launch on May 12.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.Eighth-grade STEM students at Austintown Middle School prepared the weather balloon to be launched on May 12.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.There were eight eighth-grade students who helped launch the weather balloon on May 12 at the Greenwood Chevorlet Austintown Falcon Stadium.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.STEM students helped STEM instructor, Jason Freudenberg, inflate the weather balloon on May 12 to prepare it for launch.
By ALEXIS BARTOLOMUCCI
Austintown Middle School STEM students launched their weather balloon on May 12 at the Greenwood Chevorlet Austintown Falcon Stadium.
This year was the third year the seventh- and eighth-grade students in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) program at Austintown Middle School launched their weather balloon. The balloon is 1200 grams and is filled with 80 cubic feet of helium. There is a GPS tracking device, two GoPro cameras and a flight computer tracks temperature, pressure and humidity on the balloon, which allows the students to gather information.
“It really ties in with all our education, we do a flight and space unit. We talk about all our data in class and it’s a really good experiment to test how high it can go, where our atmosphere is,” said Alexis Poschner, an eighth-grade STEM student.
The students worked on preparing the balloon for about three weeks before the launch. The morning of the launch, there is a team of eight eighth-grade students who set up and inflate the balloon, which takes between 45 minutes and an hour. After the balloon is ready, the students release it into the sky.
“My favorite part would definitely be going on the chase to go find the balloon,” said Poschner.
The eight students go on a trip with James Penk, AMS principal, and Jason Fruedenberg, STEM instructor, to chase the balloon and see where it lands. The students use the SPOT GPS app to track the balloon so they can find it when it lands, usually in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The students leave Austintown after the balloon is launched and spend most of the day tracking it.
The STEM students use the footage from the GoPro cameras on the balloon to create a video to upload to their YouTube account.
The weather balloon launch is a project the seventh- and eighth-grade students look forward to every year.