On March 21, Macon County Junior High School’s Mike (Mr. Mike) Vigeant and his eighth grade science class attempted to launch two weather balloons, and while the launches were not successful, Vigeant says failure in most people’s eyes isn’t the same when it comes to science.
“Today was to be a test run in order to work the kinks out,” he said. “There are 14 cameras that will be on the balloon. UT is sponsoring us in an attempt to video and photograph April’s eclipse at 140,000 feet. We will be launching from a location in Missouri, and the planetarium there will then use the video obtained from our flight to create an interactive virtual reality experience, a sort of ride the balloon to the eclipse thing.”
Vigeant says this is a big deal not only for MCJH, but for everyone interested in science.
“We will be going for a world record in height,” said Vigeant. “The current record is 138,000 feet. The balloon we have for the launch on Eclipse day is a 4,000-gram which is really big — bigger than these seen here today. It will go over 140,000 feet.”
Each of the two launches experienced different problems.
“The first balloon unfortunately slipped off the filling neck, which has never happened before,” said Vigeant. “The second balloon may have been released too soon, or it could have been that the line connecting the camera box to the parachute is connected. In hindsight, if that was in fact a weak area, I’m glad that it happened here because we would have lost everything. Imagine something that weighs seven pounds falling from a height of 100,000 feet with no parachute. It would have been a disaster.”
Even with the day’s failures, Vigeant says that his class has enjoyed the project up to this point very much.
“They’ve really looked forward to today,” said Vigeant. “I will see if we can possibly reschedule another test launch before April. We will just have to see what happens. These kids aren’t used to doing something like this. They have had to learn how to work together as a team which is the biggest take away. It is a very complicated project, and they have learned a lot.”
Vigeant and his team were visibly disappointed, but also handled the errors with maturity and grace.
“It was still great seeing the whole school out here today and involved,” said Vigeant. “Anytime you do science, it’s a good thing, even if it fails. In an interview I think Thomas Edison said it best when asked about why he continued with the light bulb when he had failed 1,000 times, and he replied ‘I did not fail 1,000 times, I found 1,000 ways it didn’t work.’ ”
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