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This lesson in the Discovery Lab connected nicely with the Kindergarteners' trip to the Air and Space Museum. While at the museum, the students viewed the International Space Station movie in 3-D. They saw how the astronauts prepare for living and working in space and how the astronuats "float" (fall) in a reduced gravity environment.
In the Discovery Lab the Kindergarten students learned about two ways astronauts prepare to work in space. We watched a video clip of astronauts training in the reduced gravity jet, also known as the vomit comet http://brainbites.nasa.gov/vomitcomet (Click PLAY on the remote control).
We also watched a video clip of astronauts training in a huge pool called the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. Then each student received a “spacesuit” and a tank of water. Their challenge was to make the spacesuit “flink”, neither float on the top nor sink to the bottom. How could they make the spacesuit neutrally buoyant? The students remembered that they saw weights being added to the astronaut’s spacesuit in the video clip. They discovered that they needed weights (paperclips) to be successful.
