In the past 2 months of school, I have learned and discovered a lot about our SSEP project and microgravity. This program has been very fun to do and I have worked with many people. Here are some things I’ve learned.
Define:
The problem my group and I were trying to solve was if hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol can kill bacteria in microgravity as effective as on earth? What is microgravity? Microgravity is very weak gravity, as in an orbiting spacecraft. We tested our experimental group by getting bacteria from the bottom of a shoe on paper and tried to clean it with rubbing alcohol and hand sanitizer mixed. An experimental group is a group where the experiment is being tested, recorded and changed. There is also a control group where the experiment is not been touched and is completely normal. Than two groups are compared. My group and I did not have a control group, but a experimental group. And are still waiting for the results.
Discover:
My group and I researched lots of science experiment to find the one my group and I liked the best. My group didn’t need the internet to get our experiment idea, I was using hand sanitizer to clean my hands and I was thinking if the bacteria from my hands could kill the same way with hand sanitizer in space like it does on earth. I told my group and they thought it would be a good experiment idea to work with. We went into further studies and found some information that would help us put together this experiment. But than we got some issues like, where would we get bacteria from, how is it going to fit in a small tube or how can the alcohol/hand sanitizer reach the bacteria in the tube. My team and I thought that this experiment wouldn’t work that well, so we tried looking for other experiment we could do. We didn’t find anything else that caught our attention, so we went back to the bacteria idea and got some help from the teacher.
Dream:
We dreamed for lots of experiment to work out for us but we weren’t quit sure. Here are some of the experiment we were thinking of doing.. alcohol killing bacteria, food rotting (cheese-salmonella), hair growth, can a chic hatch in space, crystals, centipedes, red worms, can bees produce honey, rocks and fossil fuels. Almost all these ideas we had were to difficult or to “big” for the tube. So we just went with the smallest idea we could find.
Design and Deliver:
Everyone in the group had a part to do when we got to our proposal summary. We all researched what we could and checked other experiments so we could get the best proposal we could. We put in all our research and knowledge together and made a roughed draft of our proposal summary. Everyone got one part to finished and had to put our everything onto it. We put together our rough draft and more ideas to make our good copy proposal summary.
This SSEP assignment was a big challenge for me and everyone in my group. Choosing which experiment to do and how well it works. Trying to put our proposal summary in the best way possible. I think what went well in this program was doing the bacteria lab. It was very fun and easy to understand. Although it did take a while to find out which bacteria had the most ‘bacteria’, we got our product and watched it grow.
Debrief:
I feel that our proposal summary could have done better, because we didn’t get much time to finish our rough draft and correcting everything perfectly. It was very stressful for my group and I too get everything correctly and on time before the day it was due. I think that if we had more time to think and get our summary together, it would have came out more better than it should and my group would be happy.
But over all, this SSEP program was pretty fun and interesting to do and make.