This year Mrs. Ratzel’s eighth grade science class has gotten the opportunity to participate in a high altitude balloon project sponsored by Burns and McDonnell.
Several groups from the eighth grade were given the opportunity to have a hands on experience with this project and come up with their own experiments-one being the potato light project. The objective was to create a potato powered light to send up into space so that we could test how high altitudes affect electro-magnetic fields.
To make the potato powered light, the students stuck a zinc plated nail and penny into three potatoes and connected them all together with wires, with two wires left to connect them to the LED light. The potatoes were planned to be sent up in a styrofoam container with a high altitude balloon that will graze the very edges of the stratosphere and reach around 60,000 to 120,000 feet.
The task- labeled ‘Project Spud’- was set to only last no more than two weeks. Unfortunately, the members of Project Spud spent most of the two weeks originally given to them simply trying to get the potato light working. The project was a flop. Luckily, though, they hatched up another plan to do the same experiment but instead with lemons. They figured that lemons had more acidity than potatoes and would work much better. And voila! The lemons worked perfectly on just the second day. The project now stands as one with lemons instead of potatoes, and thanks to nearly a month’s hard work, the students will be able to send up their three lemons connected by wires into space on April 26th.