MSU Peaks and Potentials Workshop 2009
Anasphere, Inc. spent an hour and a half of every day the entire week of June 22th-26th with 16 wonderful students at the Montana State University Peaks & Potentials. The event began with a discussion of what the Water Cycle, Water Ecosystems, and Food Chains through demonstrations and hands-on activities. The students then spent the next two days soldering the parts to build the AnaSonde Buzz-Es with a modified temperature sensor for water measurements. On Thursday, we took a mini field trip to a campus stream and collected water quality data and aquatic insects. The kids had a blast with this! They had some great insights into water quality and how different things may affect the entire ecosystem of the stream. Finally, we analyzed the data and the aquatic bugs and decided that the water quality of the stream was excellent!
MSU Peaks and Potentials Workshop 2008
Anasphere, Inc. spent an hour and a half of every day the entire week of June 9th-13th with 16 wonderful students at the Montana State University Peaks & Potentials Workshop. The event began with a discussion of what an AnaSonde is, weather, atmosphere layers, and why it is important that we learn about the earth's atmosphere through demonstrations and hands on activities. Next, the students soldered on the parts to build the AnaSonde Buzz-Es and one for flight. The students used a Morse code key to help them to decode the temperatures that the Buzz-Es were sending back to them. On the last day, we flew! The kids had a blast taking the real time data so that they could graph it later. They were very curious and asked great questions about the AnaSonde! Afterward, we discussed what was happening in the atmosphere from the looking at the graph.
4-H Workshop 2007
Anasphere, Inc. is very excited to have hosted its first outreach activity with members of the local 4-H community. Activities began with a short discussion on weather, clouds in particular. Brianna and Janet then provided a short and simple demonstration on cloud formation. They were actually able to form a cloud in the classroom!
Next, students received a brief "how to" on soldering. By the end of the day, the students completed two AnaSondes by themselves, each student soldering 3-4 parts. While two students were soldering, the remaining students constructed the parachute, and completed a weather-based web search (pdf) and weather word games. These activities helped introduce the trends and profiles we were hoping to see on our own launch like decreasing temperature and pressure with height. A large party balloon was then filled with helium and attached the parachute, the AnaSonde, and a 9-Volt battery to the balloon. Our balloon reached an altitude of 10,380 feet before we ran out of time.
For more information about hosting your own workshop, please visit our friends at Project SOAR .