Minnesota Space Grant offers stratospheric ballooning workshop for GO4ST8 high school physics teachers

James Flaten and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities ballooning team, assisted by Erick Agrimson and the St. Catherine University ballooning team, offered a learn-to-do-stratospheric-ballooning workshop for high school physics teachers from GO4ST8.

The teachers constructed two payloads containing multiple cameras, stand-alone sensors, and microcontroller-logged sensors suites, then helped launch them on a weather balloon on August 18, 2021.

After the balloon burst at about 110,000 ft (well into the stratosphere), the payloads returned to the surface by parachute and were recovered. Teachers then did data analysis and talked about how to possibly integrate stratospheric ballooning into their physics classes.