Students learn effects of space exploration – American Press

Last Modified: Wednesday, April 05, 2017 8:13 AM

By Lisa Addison / American Press

Fourth-grader Korionna Kennedy, a student at Barbe Elementary School, is in awe that she has held in her hands an object that once traveled in space. Kennedy, along with teacher Terri Miller and other fourth-grade students at Barbe Elementary, have been taking part in a Tomatosphere project, an experiment designed to help future space travel.

Our project has been amazing, said Kennedy. Its the first time in my life that I actually got to see and touch something that went to space.

Miller said Tomatosphere uses the excitement of space exploration to teach the skills and processes of scientific experimentation and inquiry. Students investigate the effects of the space environment on the growth of food that will inevitably support long-term human space travel.

Students were sent two packages of tomato seeds; one contained seeds that had been sent into space for six weeks on the International Space Station and the other contained regular seeds. Their experiment was to compare the germination rates of the two groups of seeds.

The project relies on a blind test, Miller said, in which educators and students will not know which of the two packages contained the seeds from space and which contained other seeds until the germination process is completed and the results have been submitted.

I am very excited to know that my students are helping to shape the future of space exploration, Miller said. The seeds are definitely germinating at different rates, so I have my own hypothesis about which group of seeds went to space. We will find out soon after we finish collecting our data and send it in.

Student Larren Guiton said, By working on this project, I had a chance to do something really special, and it has been a lot of fun too.

Miller said the whole project has felt magical. How did our school get selected to participate? I heard about it and then I simply applied. And waited. When our school was selected, I was elated. Its been a wonderful learning experience for the students.

Jonathan Walker, a student, said, My favorite part of the project is that we have been helping scientists. We collected a lot of data, and that will really help them in the future.

Fourth-grader Aniya Richard said she could talk about the project all day if needed. But if I had to pick just one thing about the experiment I can say that I love checking on the plants every day to see how much they have grown and knowing that we actually did this whole project. It makes me super happy.

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Students learn effects of space exploration - American Press