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Show High school science students are flying high with shuttle project by JIM SMEDLEY Record staff writer Five-four-three-two-one . . . liftoff. The Park City High School Science Club is off the ground and expected rendezvous with the space shuttle is about one year. Captaining this club will be science teacher Linda Preston and her crew will be Amy Belk, president; presi-dent; Theresa Lints, vice president; Staci Richards, secretary; and Helge Luetticemueller, treasurer. And if the journey over the next year is smooth for captain and crew, they' will have the honor of seeing one of their own science projects aboard a space shuttle flights. But these young adventurers have a long journey. Fourteen students joined the club last week and elected officers. The first official meeting will be Dec. 19 and the flight plan includes in-cludes a refueling stop every other . Thursday to recharge their scien- J tific desire. The club began when students approached ap-proached Preston about forming a group to work with and help each other with projects. Captain Preston advanced the request to Star Commander Com-mander Bill Kahn (also science. I I 1 v. Linda Preston is excited about possibilities facing newly formed science club. department chairman) , who approved approv-ed of the plan. ,., "We had an offer from Utah State University to fly a project' aboard an upcoming space shuttle mission," Preston said. "They paid for space aboard the craft, which costs about $10,000 for one canister. They then offered one-fifth of the space to Park City High School free of charge. tJl"Utah State actually made the space available to any high school, but our kids picked up on it and wanted to do it," she added. "It would be nice if we could develop a project within a year, but it will probably pro-bably take a full year to develop." But the science club will not remain re-main dormant for a year as it has several other territories to explore. Members will participate in the judging of the local Science Fair Jan. 29, host the first-ever Region 9 Science Fair Feb. 22 and select the top Park City High School science projects, which have a chance of being be-ing selected by the National " , Aeronautics and Space Administray tion for future use on a shuttle voyage in a contest unrelated to the USU Space Shuttle offer. "Working with adults in judging of the local Science Fair is a good opportunity op-portunity for the students. It rounds out their perspective," Preston said. "It will help the students do a better job. Students are much more critical of their fellow students so they become more critical of themselves." Preston said her crew will not make the final decision, but that it was interesting to see how close their evaluations come to the adults' final decision. : The Regional Science Fair will be sponsored in conjunction with the International In-ternational Science Fair. Projects ; will be judged by members of the international in-ternational organization and by representatives from the University of Utah. The science club will, however, ' have a final say in selecting the top 10 Park City High School projects to be entered in a nationwide contest to get their experiment performed on a shuttle flight. IThe contest is open to all 140 cience students at the high school. ' But, the entries selected still will . have a long way to go. After the entries en-tries are pared to 10, they will be sent to a regional competition, which involves schools from 10 western states. The top 20 projects from each of the 10 regions in the United States will then be sent to NASA. Then NASA will choose seven entries as projects to be done aboard a shuttle flight. The odds of being selected seem pretty slim. However, Preston said a student she taughtin Brush, Colo., two years ago was a national winner. win-ner. So, there's always a chance. |
