Staff Report
Nine UNM students will spend next week floating weightlessly in a series of anti-gravity experiments designed and conducted by NASA.
In its fourth year, NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program provides chemical and nuclear engineering students a rare chance to evaluate reduced-gravity experiments they've spent the past year designing, said Robert Busch, UNM engineering professor and the faculty adviser for the UNM portion of the project.
The UNM students traveled to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas Tuesday with the equipment they built to conduct their research. They will spend three days, from March 9-12, onboard the "Weightless Wonder," a Boeing 707 commercial plane that has been customized to experience weightlessness.
"It really is a unique program, and it affords the students a chance to learn so much about this field," Busch said. "It is also a great opportunity for them to actually see the projects they've worked so hard on in action."
To do so, the plane climbs high into the atmosphere and then, with its massive turbo engines, accelerates downward at the rate of gravity, Busch said.
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The plane repeats the pattern, flying up and down through the atmosphere to give the students an opportunity to test their experiments, which gauge the effects of anti-gravity on everyday items.
Busch said some of the students' experiments research household appliances like sewer pumps and coffee pots, which rely on gravity to function properly.
The UNM students, who will be accompanied by two Albuquerque area high school students, will also use the time in the plane to test the gravitational effect on boiling water.
While the process is well known in earth's standard gravity, Busch said his students predict removing gravity's familiar effects will have a profound impact on the physics of boiling.
"It will be interesting to see the results of our experiments," he said. "Whatever they are, we will use them to further our research and gain invaluable knowledge for the future."
