By WMBD-TV
BLOOMINGTON/NORMAL – On Monday, advanced placement students at Normal Community High School launched a balloon to track the movements of the solar eclipse.
This is through the high altitude balloon program; just one of many offered through State Farm. Mentors from State Farm held seven sessions for students throughout the school year. Students built a micro-controller with sensors that logs temperature, pressure, latitude, longitude, altitude and time. This replicates what the national weather services does twice-a-day daily.
“All the cool things we do with science, tech, engineering and math. And how they all come together to make one goal happen,” said sophomore Krishna Nair. “Like today we did the balloon launch. It took multiple aspects of STEM to really make this process happen.
The balloon was in the air for close to two and half hours traveling to Indiana. Normal Community was originally set to launch the balloon next week but, Tom Pankonen, lead software engineer at State Farm, said they lucked out when they were able to switch the date to capture the eclipse.
“Honestly it’s pretty cool even without the eclipse to see the curve of the earth and the black of space and to see the killer pictures, to see the school as it goes up in the air. The students really enjoy it,” said Pankonen. “I hope that more students get to see this and it excites me about technology and shows them something where they can actually touch and feel science.”
The program works with 260 students throughout the Twin Cities. Bloomington High school launched a balloon last week. University High School will launch a balloon on April 12. Normal West will launch a balloon on April 26.
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