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Young World
Weightless flight of discovery
COMPILED BY NIMI KURIAN
The moment he became weightless, Mike Hickey of South High School in Cleveland, Ohio, completely forgot about the science experiment he was to conduct.
"After the first bounce, I forgot about the experiments," an exhilarated Hickey said after returning from his 90-minute flight aboard G-Force One, an aircraft specially designed to simulate the zero gravity of space by making controlled free-fall descents. Hickey and 38 other teachers took part in the "Weightless Flights of Discovery" sponsored by Northrop Grumman Corp. and Zero Gravity Corporation of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, U.S., according to a Reuters report.
"Any tiny movement shot you across the plane," said Tracy Cindric of Lincoln High School in Gahanna, Ohio. "It was very chaotic." The teachers, representing 28 schools in Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Arizona, Louisiana and Washington, D.C., are now expected to take their experience, their photographs and above all their enthusiasm back to the classroom and inspire the next generation of scientists, mathematicians and engineers. "For every teacher you train and every teacher you excite, they will go back and excite 100 kids," said Thomas Vice, a Sector Vice President at Northrop Grumman who helped devise the programme.
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