Canadian Teens sends Lego "Above the Clouds"

[gareb]

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Teens send toy above the clouds
By Alan Boyle


It's very cool that two 17-year-old Canadians sent a flag-toting Lego figurine into the sky on a weather balloon, as part of a weekend project that cost less than $500. It's cooler still that they got back some fantastic video of the toy silhouetted against the backdrop of a curving Earth beneath a black sky. But let's not call it putting a "Lego man in space." Even though the balloon ascended to around 80,000 feet, that's only a quarter of the way to the boundary of outer space.

That distinction doesn't take anything away from the feat that Toronto teens Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad pulled off this month: The high-school students worked during four months' worth of free Saturdays to put together their balloon-borne experimental package, including four cameras, a cell phone with a GPS app, a home-sewn parachute and a Lego "minifig" holding a Canadian flag.

When the wind conditions were right, as determined by a website that calculates balloon trajectories, the teens headed out to a soccer field in Newmarket and sent their rig up on an $85 weather balloon. The data suggest that the balloon rose to somewhere around 80,000 feet over the course of 65 minutes, then blew apart. The Lego man and the cameras came back down to Earth, buoyed by the parachute and protected within a plastic-foam box during the half-hour descent. Eventually, the cell phone guided the kids to a field about 75 miles away from the launch point.

The cameras recorded two videos and 1,500 photos, documenting the Lego man's amazing trip up through the clouds. "We never knew it would be this good," Ho told the Toronto Star.

But it got even better: After the Star published the teens' story, they were swamped with media attention. Canon, the company that made the cameras used on the Lego man's trip, said it would give Ho and Muhammad top-of-the-line cameras so they could continue their "creativity and inspiration." Lego sent its congratulations. A Toronto couple offered to reimburse the kids for their costs. Reports about the feat filtered out to The Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Huffington Post and elsewhere. The YouTube video has been viewed more than 600,000 times, and there's even a Facebook fan page.



(click on the title link for the complete story.)

[gareb]

with philippine science education shortened by the removal of the science curriculum on grade 1 pupils, sparking the imaginations of children for the final frontier just got dimmer.

[balipseyev]

+1 to your comment gareb... Their arguments for deleting science was kids @ grade 1 and 2 don't really learn from it... Most kids days days already play computers even before grade 1, so i think the deficiency is on the education system not on kids...

[gareb]

+1 to your comment gareb... Their arguments for deleting science was kids @ grade 1 and 2 don't really learn from it... Most kids days days already play computers even before grade 1, so i think the deficiency is on the education system not on kids...

the contrast reveals the utter lack of foresight and how bankrupt we have become in re-imagining our future. i have posted on that thread on the P&CE board.

[risklight]

with philippine science education shortened by the removal of the science curriculum on grade 1 pupils, sparking the imaginations of children for the final frontier just got dimmer.

mas ganahan man sila mapadako ila budget sa pag kurakot

[mindtrickz]

nga2x taga pilipinas

[zeiferlance]

ka sad sa pilipinas... wala nalang jud ta ma achieve lain ani aside sa boxing?

[warsucks]

biliba uie...pilipinas? ay nalang puro way ayo ang mga experiment..

[æRLO]

80,000 feet, that's well into the stratosphere. That's pretty neat considering these kids are only high school students.

[emailroy2002]

ot: magpa lupad napud na ang pinoy og tabanog nya butangan og Lego ron


taas2x pud ning baloona ilang napa lupad da... nindot ni ilang achievement da.. maka inspire sa uban mo experiment