It's no secret that lab days are some of the coolest in science class. Teacher Lauren Parker and her students at Fort Worth Academy took that cool to truly new heights.
Parker got a ticket on a plane that simulates what it's like to be in outer space and experience weightlessness.
"It was awesome, it was really cool," Parker said.
She challenged her students to come up with experiments she could try while spinning around up there, like dropping mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke, moving water through valves, or figuring out how some substances change from liquid to solid, when exposed to sound.
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"It's very weird, I'm not sure why it does that but we're testing it because we want to see why it does it in zero-G," said Williams Stimek, a student.
But the big one students tried was making breakfast.
"There's no way to make pancakes if the batter is floating in the air," said James McDonald, a student.
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Could this work? Is it really possible to defy the laws of gravity, for some fluffy flapjacks? The flight crew wouldn't approve the hot plate on the plane, but the kids did walk away with knowledge.
"My opinion was it was going to stick and make like a dome because the zero-G makes it go up but the Maillard reaction makes it go down," said Charlotte Killebrew, a student.
Other teachers across the country got to take the ride and all that data is being collected and passed along to scientists.
"The kids made the comment at one point of like, 'Oh, this isn't just a school project. Like this is actual research.' I was like, 'Yeah, like, this is actually going somewhere,'" Parker said.
So are the students, asking critical questions, doing research, and working to solve the problems of tomorrow, big and small.
