Mission 1, Experiment: Microgravity Wine

A) Describing the experiment:

Alhan: The masterminds behind the experiment were from Claminade college preparatory who at the time were grade 9 and 10. Max Holden and Paige D Andrea had the idea of creating an experiment to test the speed of fermentation of wine when exposed to micro gravity. These students were from West Hills, California and the date of the experiment was from the 13th and 14th of December in 2011. They chose this experiment because they had the thought that when something is in micro gravity it’s at a constant free fall so in this experiment it would constantly move the grape juice and yeast. When the sugar in the grape juice is mixed with the yeast it will ferment and produce ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. They wanted to see if the exposure to micro gravity will speed up the process or slow it down. To test this they would do the experiment on Earth too and check to see which one had a higher amount of carbon dioxide, whichever had more would show the one that was faster.

B) Retell the team’s background research:

Kaleb: They had to research the average ratio of grape juice and yeast to see how long it would take to ferment. They also had to find how much formalin was needed to stop the experiment, to find that they had to have enough formalin compared to the amount of liquid they had. After 5 days of testing and research they found the perfect amount. They did lots of testing before getting the experiment right!

C) Explain what the experimental ad control groups were and what the difference was:

Olivia: The control groups were the ratio of grape juice and yeast and the amount of formalin that was needed to stop the experiment. The experimental groups were the amounts of carbon dioxide (with Titration Kit), and weighing the sediment to test the ethyl levels of the alcohol. The difference between the experimental groups and the control groups was that the experimental group: you had to test how much you needed and try it before coming to a 100% conclusive result of the measurements and amounts that you need vs the control groups: where you knew the exact measurements of something and it never changed.

D) Is there any extra information?

There were no extra information that could be found, contacting the students was also very hard because this experiment happened in 2011 and we could not reach out to them now.

“Why do you think the group won?”

Alhan: I feel like the students won a place because their experiment was about something not many people think about and that is the fermentation of grapes and the process of wine. The idea that the process of the fermentation can change to a different speed when exposed to micro gravity seems very interesting.

Kaleb: I think they won because they had a interesting and well researched topic that was intriguing so maybe the judges thought it was as good as I think it is.

Olivia:

I think that the students won because the experiment is a different idea, and that the idea of using micro gravity as a constant free-fall moving the cells constantly, can be used to our advantage. If the wine was created faster in the micro gravity, then we could be able to create new substances, and produce more substances faster rather than on earth.

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