UPDATE # 2 - September 10, 1996

PART 1: Weekly WebChat
PART 2: Collaborative project: design space hardware, grow plants
PART 3: Discussion group for teacher
PART 4: Working with the Russians on Earth and in space
PART 5: Growing plants in space, when many things went wrong

A new opportunity is now available to connect live with other
teachers and the S/MORE development team.  Every Thursday,
we will meet virtually online to discuss issues and learn from one
another. Hopefully your questions about the S/MORE project will get
answered.  I know the S/MORE team will come with our listening-ears
on, ready to adapt the project to meet real teacher requirements.

We will hold the discussion on the Web using a technology called
WebChat.  To use it, you only need a Web browser like Netscape or
Microsoft's Internet Explorer.  These teacher chats will be similar to
the student/NASA-expert forums which will be held beginning in
October.  So these chats will allow you to get comfortable with the
technology ahead of time.

On Thursdays, we will alternate the starting time of the one hour
discussion.  We hope this will allow for participation from teachers
on the east coast, west coast, and everywhere in between and
beyond.
The schedule for the next few weeks is:
                     Pacific       Eastern
September 12            noon        3:00pm
September 19          3:00pm        6:00pm
September 26            noon        3:00pm
October    3          3:00pm        6:00pm

To join the fun, point your web browser to:

Here is a preview of upcoming S/MORE activities involving students
collaborating with one another. There are two separate parts
planned.  The full details will be available within the next two
weeks.

Part 1:
Classrooms around the world design plant-growing hardware, debate
the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches,
and then compare with NASA designs.
   Sep 22 - Oct 14:
   Classroom design of what is needed to grow plants in space; at
   conclusion, classes share designs for posting online.

   Oct 14 - Nov 1:
   Discuss various ideas, debate good and bad points, try to reach
   consensus.

   Nov 1 - Nov 15:
   Get feedback from experts, some interactions to help students see
   how their answers compared to NASA experts

Part 2
Students grow plants, collecting data to share with other classrooms.
Results are discussed to make sense of differences.
   Nov 1 - Nov 22:
   Do an experiment about plant germination
   

   Dec 2 - Dec 13:
   Compare results, discuss what may have caused differences

A new mail list called discuss-sm is now available.  The list will
provide a forum for teachers to discuss a wide variety
of issues, concerns, teaching strategies, useful resources, project
collaboration opportunities, and suggestions for the S/MORE project.

The goals are similar to the weekly WebChats (described above),
but the Email format will allow for more thoughtful discussion.
Whereas WebChat demands an immediate response limited to a few
sentences, discuss-sm is not so constrained.

The messages from discuss-sm can be sent directly to your mail box.
This is the most common way to participate in the discussion. For
this option, every time a colleague shares a message, you'll receive
it in your mailbox.
To join the list this way, send an email message to:
   listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov
In the message body, write only these words:
   subscribe discuss-sm

For those feeling like they already receive too much email, a digest
of the discuss-sm list is available.  For this option, all the
messages from a day are compiled into one bigger message which is
forwarded to your email account.  In this way, you'll receive all of
the information, but the traffic will come only once per day.
To join the list this way, send an email message to:
   listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov
In the message body, write only these words:
   subscribe discuss-digest-sm

And for those that really don't want any more email, you may keep up
with this list via the Web.  Look under the Teacher's Lounge at:

WORKING WITH THE RUSSIANS ON EARTH AND IN SPACE
Michael Hale

June 30, 1996
I recall a situation in which one of the cosmonauts contacted
someone in Houston, TX. The person in Houston called our Payloads
specialist in Walnut Creek, CA, where he lives, and he called me in
Mountain View, CA where I live.

The questions were about how many types of certain tools were
inside a kit that we had sent into space. They needed to use one of
the tools to get a screw that had fallen out of a fan and had become
trapped in an air conditioning duct. They had remembered that NASA
had a long tool that could reach the screw.

So, the cosmonauts wanted to know if there were enough of the tools
on the space station so that if they broke one, they could use another
one. The information was probably written on paper somewhere, but
finding the paper may have taken more time than calling me at home.
Since I knew the most about the tools, I called them back and told
them.

This reminded me of when I was younger, when I was just out of
school and I first started working. I was working at Martin-Marietta
and I was on a nuclear military program. I realized that my Russian
counterpart was sitting at his desk doing the same work I was, and
his work plus my work equaled zero. We were just canceling each
other. We would both be worrying about the defense of our countries
and not producing anything positive for the planet. I actually began
to wonder what it would be like to work with him and produce
something positive.

I now know and work with many people in Russia. Many of them
worked in the defense industry like I did. Now we are working
together to do something positive for the planet instead of wasting
time and money to defend our territories.

July 31, 1996
Why do we want to grow plants in space? For one thing, because
plants are extremely sensitive to gravity. If a young seedling is
tipped just a few degrees from the vertical, it will change its
direction of growth within a few hours until it is again growing
straight up. (Plants will also grow toward a light if it is coming
from one side for awhile, but if the light moves overhead as the sun
does, then the response to gravity is much stronger -- most plants
do grow straight up, at least before they begin to branch.)

Even after about 130 years of truly scientific study, we still don't
know exactly how plants respond to gravity although we do know a
lot about what is going on. Maybe if we see how they grow when
there is no directional gravitational force, we can learn something
about gravitropism (how plants respond to gravity). Additionally, the
day might come when astronauts/cosmonauts grow plants in space
to purify the air (take out carbon dioxide and release oxygen) and
provide food. Clearly, if we are ever to reach that goal, we must
learn how to grow healthy plants in microgravity.

To get data to better understand some of these things, I led an
experiment in space. Our experiment was carried out from August to
November 1995, but many things went wrong. Two thirds of the
lights stopped functioning very early in the experiment, and that
was a serious thing because plants need light to grow, and when all
the lamps in Svet (the greenhouse) are functioning, there is just
enough light for food growth. There were other problems, but the
plants did stay alive for 90 days and we got the chemically fixed
samples back.

Not a single plant formed even one wheat head! Right now, we
don't understand this because when we grow the plants under such
low light on Earth, they form a head (sometimes almost
microscopic) even if they have so little light that they eventually
die. Wheat has formed heads in space, however, so the fact that our
plants did not flower is perhaps, the most interesting thing we
learned in this experiment. We are doing many ground experiments to
try to find out why the plants stayed vegetative. It was also
important to see the equipment we built in Utah worked just fine!

The entire experiment is being repeated as I write this: seeds
planted on August 5, 1996, and samples to be brought back in early
February 1997.

Note:  As this project has officially ended, these and other inactive
 mailing lists have been shut down.
If this is your first message from the updates-sm list, welcome!

To catch up on back issues, please visit the following Internet URL: