The moment he became weightless, Mike Hickey of
South High School in Cleveland, Ohio, completely forgot about the science
experiment he was to conduct.
"After the first bounce, I said nuts to the experiments," an exhilarated
Hickey said after returning from his 90-minute flight aboard G-Force One, an
aircraft specially designed to simulate the zero gravity of space by making
controlled free-fall descents.
Hickey and 38 other teachers took part over the weekend in the last of five
"Weightless Flights of Discovery" sponsored by Northrop Grumman Corp. and Zero
Gravity Corporation of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
They giggled, somersaulted, gulped floating blobs of water and pushed each
other around the padded cabin of the modified Boeing 727.
"Any tiny movement shot you across the plane," said Tracy Cindric of Lincoln
High School in Gahanna, Ohio.
"It was very chaotic."
The teachers, representing 28 schools in Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Arizona,
Louisiana and Washington, D.C., are now expected to take their experience, their
photographs and above all their enthusiasm back to the classroom and inspire the
next generation of scientists, mathematicians and engineers.
"For every teacher you train and every teacher you excite, they will go back
and excite 100 kids," Thomas Vice, a Sector Vice President at Northrop Grumman
who helped devise the program, said in an interview.
NOT JUST A THRILL
"They see if you are a scientist, if you are an explorer, they see it's fun,"
added Brooks McKinney, a spokesman for Northrup Grumman, after the first of two
flights at Dulles International Airport on Saturday.
He said the company's motivation is partly selfish.
"We are in a high-tech business that requires math and science and a passion
thereof," McKinney said in an interview. "It is important to our future as a
company."
But the future competitiveness of the United States is at stake, too. Vice,
the teachers, and others all cited surveys that show U.S. schoolchildren falling
behind students in Asia and Europe in math and science.
"Are we going to be competitive in the future?" asked Vice.
"Do we have the right scientists and mathematicians thinking about the next
problem? I believe that teachers are the heart of this country and the
make-or-break turnaround point for where we are going in the future."
The teachers said they felt the pressure.
"Research is showing us that those people who go into the science,
technology, engineering and mathematics fields have pretty much made up their
minds by the time they enter eighth grade," added Linda Froschauer, President of
the National Science Teachers Association.
"Newton's laws are not easy," Froschauer told the teachers. "Now you can take
them back and make them real."
Some of them may need a little remedial instruction themselves before they
can do so.
Hickey was mystified by one experience.
"I had a water bottle with this much water in it, that I was going to drink,"
he said, indicating a small amount.
"At zero gravity there was nothing in there that you could see. But when
gravity came back, it was in there. It had just vaporized or something."
