Scientists Mitzi Adams, Paul Bremner, Dennis Gallagher, Athiray Panchapakesan, and Alphonse Sterling (Heliophysics & Planetary Science Branch) supported VBAS’ Astronomy Day on 10/22/22. Visitors to the NASA table received handouts about the 2023 annular/2024 total solar eclipses, general astronomy, NASA missions, and space. In addition, patrons were treated to spacey experiments/demonstrations done by inserting various objects into a bell-jar vacuum chamber, including:
- A laboratory cleanroom glove knotted at the wrist to demonstrate that we live in a “sea” of air that presses on us from all sides. The sealed glove expands in vacuum.
- A burning candle to demonstrate how air provides the oxygen the candle needs to burn, and we need to breathe.
- A feather and a hammer to simulate an Apollo 15 gravity experiment - A small hammer and feather dropped within the evacuated bell jar demonstrates that gravity exists in a vacuum and that objects with differing mass fall at the same rate.
- A transistor radio (what’s that?!) to show that sound does not travel in a vacuum.
- A small camera to show that radio waves do travel in a vacuum.
- Ice water in a small glass to demonstrate that in a vacuum, even without heat, water will boil until it freezes on the surface, which successfully demonstrates how a comet or an ice-water-ocean moon could form around Jupiter or Saturn
- Marshmallows (very popular) – Patrons were asked to predict what will happen when marshmallows are exposed to a vacuum and then later brought back to ambient Huntsville air pressure. Patrons then ate the shriveled-up, air-depleted marshmallows (the taste does not change!).
