STEP 2 – DEVELOPING THE STUDENT PAYLOADS

To enhance the student experience and promote more scientific engagement, we strongly encourage teachers/educators to challenge the students during the payload development process. Our balloon flights are expensive and time consuming, and we can only do a handful each year. So, we want them to be as impactful as possible.

For years, we have given the K-12 students a lot of leeway (with input from their teachers, of course) regarding what they want to put in their payload boxes. However, this sometimes results in student payloads with limited educational potential or scientific merit. Although this may be fine for some groups of younger participants (e.g., those just beginning to develop an interest in science), we feel that older students could benefit more by engaging in a more structured or challenging payload development process (i.e., one that loosely mimics the scientific process). General guidelines for different age groups are given below.

Guidelines & Expectations

Elementary School Participants

Students at this age should simply have fun and explore their ideas. We want to encourage them to ask questions and be curious about science and engineering. Teachers/educators can help the students decide what items to fly in the payload boxes. They might also encourage their students to make predictions about what they think will happen to their items during the flight. Teachers/educators are more than welcome to develop their own set of requirements if they wish. However, student excitement is all that we expect!

Middle School Participants

While not required, we hope that middle school students will take payload development a step further by formulating a thoughtful description, rationale, and hypothesis for each item that goes into their payload boxes. We realize that many students in this age group are only beginning to learn about the scientific or engineering process. However, we want to encourage them to start thinking like a scientist or engineer, giving careful consideration to what they put in the payload boxes and documenting their progress. Why did you choose this item? What do you predict will happen? How will you know if your prediction is correct? What did you learn?

High School Participants

Again, although not required, we would love to see high school students try to answer specific science questions or engineering challenges that can be explored using a high-altitude balloon. For example, they could develop an experiment, or some sort of measuring device. They could even build a simple sensor that is controlled by an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. The payload doesn’t need to be complex, nor does it need to accomplish anything groundbreaking. However, it should be well thought out and designed following either the scientific method or engineering process. Teamwork is strongly encouraged at this age level.

STUDENT PAYLOAD RESTRICTIONS

Weeks before the launch, we will send the teacher/educator a set of empty payload boxes that can be used to house the student payload items. The students will work with the teacher/educator to decide what to include in the boxes. We currently have only a few constraints for our K-12 student payloads, listed below:

• The total combined weight of all student payload boxes cannot exceed 5 pounds (2.3 kg)
• Payloads may not include live animals or items that are highly combustible or flammable
• There should not be any sharply pointed objects protruding from the payload boxes
• Liquids should be used conservatively
• All potentially messy items should be enclosed in sealed plastic bags

EDUCATOR RESOURCES

We have found that some teachers admit they struggle to effectively guide their students during the payload design phase. Many simply do not know what kind of experiments work well for high-altitude balloon flights. For more information and resources for teachers/educators, please visit our K-12 Outreach Flights page.