Weather balloon takes a wild ride in region's skies

DIAMOND LAKE, Wash. — Five, four ...

Anxious and excited, 38 students watched as Marty Mueller and Ian Gaddie filled the 1,200-gram weather balloon with helium. While holding it secure, Mueller let the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders test the pull of the balloon as it filled.

"It feels heavy, but in the wrong direction," remarked one of the students.

Three, two ...

When the balloon neared perfect inflation, which was carefully calculated by Sandpoint Middle School instructor Dinah Gaddie prior to the launch, it was attached to the payload. The payload included a triangle-shaped wooden frame, and attached to it was a GoPro camera, a satellite tracking device, a flight controller and, well, some popcorn kernels.

One ...

The balloon reached the end of its rope and the group cheered, eyes and cameras looking up, as Mueller let the balloon take the payload from his hands and pull it toward the sky.

"It's out of our hands," Dinah Gaddie said as the balloon soared higher. "There is nothing we can do now, so we just let it go."

The near space balloon launch on Friday was part of the Gizmo2Extremes project through Gizmo-CDA, in collaboration with Gaddie and her manufacturing and design students, as well as Laura Spurway's gifted and talented sixth-graders from Rathdrum.

Gaddie and her seventh- and eighth-grade students have been planning the launch since school started, doing experiments with helium balloons and covering several different topics, including mapping, geocaching, weather patterns, and "a lot" of math.   

"I’ve loved it because I have been able to support so many different content areas," Gaddie said. "As I’ve gone through it, I am just been blown away at the connections I have been able to make. That’s really where my heart is — all the other things they are learning in all their other classes, where do they apply in the world? This is a specific example."

The goal was to get the balloon to a minimum of 28,000 meters, though Gaddie hoped it would ascend to more than 30,000. In feet, the balloon was expected to burst as it reached 100,000, which is equal to just over 30,000 meters. 

The main purpose of the launch, and the reason for the GoPro, was to take photos of the curvature of the Earth. The flight controller sensed the temperature and pressure, recording data every six seconds as it made its way into near space, which is the region of Earth's atmosphere encompassing the stratosphere, mesosphere, and the lower thermosphere.

The students came up with two ideas of items to attach to the payload, one of which was the popcorn. The theory was that, although it is extremely cold in near space, the pressure could cause the kernels to pop. The kids were also curious as to whether there would be a time warp in between the difference in gravity, so originally there was going to be a stopwatch attached to the payload, syncing it to another stopwatch the group would hold onto.

The stopwatch idea ended up nixed in the end, although the payload ended up well under FAA regulations of four pounds. The bundle was a total of 648 grams, which is about a pound and a half.

Gaddie's students, 25 of whom attended the launch, were more than excited for the launch after all of their hard work and preparation. One of the more interesting discoveries, said Alex Coleman, was how big the balloon was, and Jobey Dillon said it is "crazy" how high it would go.

"I'm most excited to watch the video when it comes back to Earth," said James Morasch, and to see the photos of the curvature of the Earth, added his classmate, Keyan Strock.

The difficult part for Gaddie was determining where the launch would be. The final decision to launch from the KOA baseball field on the south side of Diamond Lake was not made until the night before.

"There are a lot of variables in science we can control, but wind and weather is one of them we can not," Gaddie said.

Spurway, who brought the 13 gifted and talented students out to the launch site as well. The class meets once a week, she said, and while Gaddie's class did the launch planning, Spurway said her class has been looking at things like how to design graphs for when they get the data back from the launch.   

"We are going to do follow-up lessons, a lot of what Dinah has done in the classroom, after the launch and then hope for another launch in the spring," Spurway said.

Gizmo-CDA is a nonprofit makerspace in Coeur d'Alene, founded by Barb and Marty Mueller, to provide tools, classes and workshops for makers of all ages. Gizmo2Extremes started about a year ago, Barb Mueller said, to bring science to the community in a "real way," bringing in mentors with different skillsets.

"And now we are at this stage where it is coming into the schools," Mueller said. "It is exactly the pathway that we wanted — it is the pathway to having kids love science, believe in science and want to be part of science."

The balloon was expected to land south of Coeur d'Alene. (To find out how the landing fared, see the related story by Devin Heilman.)

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.