Balloons and paradoxes

Last week I was standing on a freezing cold airfield with a latex balloon in my hands. Later that day, I was searching the roadside for a polystyrene box. This is not an average day at the office – it was all part of “Reach for the Sky – Using Weather Balloons”, a course run by the National Science Learning Centre. Our tutors were Rob Harrison and Steve Hugill. Rob is a pioneer in amateur high altitude balloon flights. He has been on the BBC and CNN talking about his balloon flights. Steve is a teacher from Boston Spa, and has also sent up a number of balloons. Both Rob and Steve have been getting schools involved in the flights and have taken some amazing pictures from the edge of space.

Although we practised filling the balloon and tying on the polystyrene box containing the camera, we didn’t actually fly anything that day: due to the stratospheric winds, the predicted landing site for our balloon was somewhere in the lake district! After a quick coffee to warm us up, we had great fun trying to find a dummy payload that Rob had planted by the side of the road – all good practice for when we can try out the real thing.

The day after the course I was at the University of York Science Engagement Celebration. Here is a picture of me talking to one of the computer science department – you can see Jim Al-khalili in the background. Prof. Al-khalili gave a talk about paradoxes from his recent book, Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics. The “Monty Hall Paradox” is a great one about probability that you can try out with a maths class and Olber’s Paradox (why is the sky dark at night?) will get your physics classes thinking.

Whilst we are on the subject of the night sky, Dr. Andy Newsam, one of our Space Ambassadors, is currently on his AstroTour of schools in the UK. You can track his progress here.

If you are in Scotland – why not try to get involved with one of the Dark Sky events.

Also keep your eye on the National STEM Centre eLibrary for new Space resources this week

Tom

Tom Lyons, ESERO-UK Teacher Fellow
Follow me on twitter @space_tom