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Monday, July 28, 2025

NorthGate students learn Lessons from Cubes in Space

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20141005

How would a com­pass be­have in space or in the earth's ionos­phere? What if you sent up an un­charged bat­tery there–what would hap­pen? What about send­ing up live mos­qui­to lar­vae in a gel–how would life be af­fect­ed? What if you sent up a pen­du­lum–what might it do?

Stu­dents at North­Gate Col­lege ex­plored many cre­ative ideas, in­clud­ing these ones, be­fore de­cid­ing on their win­ning en­try in the Cubes in Space project: an ion­i­sa­tion ex­per­i­ment to mea­sure whether an elec­tro­mag­net­ic field is gen­er­at­ed in the ionos­phere.

"It was an ex­per­i­ment to test whether we could har­vest elec­tric­i­ty from space or if there was an elec­tri­cal charge in the ionos­phere. If so, could it be record­ed? And was it a rea­son­able enough amount to use?" ex­plained Zachary Joel last Wednes­day when stu­dents in­volved in the project chat­ted with the Sun­day Guardian.

The ionos­phere, I learned, is the lay­er in the up­per at­mos­phere that is ionised by so­lar and cos­mic ra­di­a­tion. The sun's en­er­gy is so strong at this lev­el that it breaks apart mol­e­cules. Even though the ionos­phere is tiny–it oc­cu­pies on­ly 0.1 per cent of the earth's to­tal at­mos­phere–it is very im­por­tant for us: it makes long-dis­tance ra­dio com­mu­ni­ca­tion pos­si­ble by re­flect­ing ra­dio waves back to earth. The ionos­phere is al­so home to au­ro­ras. If elec­tri­cal en­er­gy can in­deed be har­vest­ed here, we might have a new re­new­able source.

It took stu­dents two weeks of brain­storm­ing be­fore com­ing up with the win­ning "ion­i­sa­tion in the at­mos­phere" idea. They then had to re­fine that idea in­to some­thing work­able.The stu­dents had to sub­mit their pro­pos­al to the con­test or­gan­is­ers. Af­ter ap­proval, they had less than a week to bring all the bits to­geth­er, work­ing dur­ing lunchtimes and af­ter school. So all of their ad­vance re­search and plan­ning was vi­tal, giv­en the short con­struc­tion time.

There were sev­er­al chal­lenges, how­ev­er.First of all, the ex­per­i­ment had to fit in a tiny cube of 40 mm X 40 m x 40mm–that's pret­ty small. The weight lim­it was 50 grammes. So they had to find minia­ture com­po­nents (not avail­able in lo­cal hard­ware stores!), do ex­ten­sive re­search to source and or­der the cor­rect parts on­line. They had to or­gan­ise them­selves and as­sign du­ties to each of the 17 team mem­bers to do the whole project.

In the fi­nal week of as­sem­bly, de­spite their ear­li­er re­search, they sud­den­ly dis­cov­ered they had to­com­plete­ly change their orig­i­nal de­sign to fit in­to the cube, shared Con­rad Taitt and Je­nae Williams. So they had to write to the con­test or­gan­is­ers and re-sub­mit a whole new pro­pos­al. They learned that fail­ures are of­ten nec­es­sary on the path to a suc­cess­ful ex­per­i­ment–and they put their heads to­geth­er to find a so­lu­tion, ad­just­ing their orig­i­nal de­sign.

They made two cubes test­ing the same idea. The first (main) cube con­tained a mi­cro­com­put­er which was at­tached to cop­per wire and a volt­meter. (A volt­meter is an in­stru­ment used for mea­sur­ing elec­tri­cal po­ten­tial dif­fer­ence be­tween two points in an elec­tric cir­cuit.)Stu­dents ex­plained that when cop­per wire pass­es through an elec­tri­cal field, a cur­rent is in­duced in the wire. "In­for­ma­tion from the volt­meter would be mea­sured by the mi­cro­com­put­er and stored on an SD card. So that was the main cube ex­per­i­ment," said a stu­dent. (This cube hasn't been opened since its June rock­et trip yet–stu­dents are wait­ing on one of their sci­ence men­tors to help them de­code the da­ta.)

The sec­ond cube they put to­geth­er was sim­pler: it had no mi­cro­com­put­er, just a fuse at­tached to cop­per wires. So if there were in­deed elec­tri­cal charges up there, the cur­rent would go through the wire and blow the fus­es. (When this cube was opened af­ter its re­turn to earth, no fus­es were burnt. So the stu­dents learned about the sci­en­tif­ic method: you can nev­er know a hy­poth­e­sis will work, un­less you test it!)

Ex­cite­ment in learn­ing

Would the stu­dents do this again? They replied with a re­sound­ing "Yes!""I learned a lot about the ionos­phere," said Shanade Ali. "I re­al­ly didn't know much about it or the many lay­ers there...Al­so, we had to put a lot of time in­to the ex­per­i­ment, even though we had on­ly a short time to build it, so we had to have good team­work: peo­ple had to de­pend on oth­er peo­ple to get the in­for­ma­tion quick­ly."Head of North­Gate Col­lege's Math De­part­ment, Ruth Rud­den said they found out about the con­test through the Bright­Path Foun­da­tion (a friend of North­Gate Col­lege). The col­lege then threw it open to any stu­dents in­ter­est­ed–to a great re­sponse.

Rud­den said, "idoo­dle, a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny, was the main brain be­hind the com­pe­ti­tion. They cov­ered some costs. To­tal costs were about US$100... idoo­dle re­al­ly tried to make it ac­ces­si­ble to stu­dents every­where; it was not a 'First World' com­pe­ti­tion.

"These stu­dents re­al­ly learned a lot from the ex­per­i­ment...in­clud­ing how to sol­der," she com­ment­ed.

"We learned pa­tience," quipped one stu­dent.

"And the need to have con­fi­dence in what we're do­ing, even though we're just a small school in Trinidad!" said an­oth­er.

"Our school de­c­la­ra­tion says: 'We ac­cept no lim­i­ta­tion ex­cept those giv­en to us by God.' We try to be a glob­al school...And be­ing glob­al does not start when you step on­to a plane. It starts in your men­tal­i­ty, in your heart," said Rud­den.

She added,"I would love to see in the school sys­tem, start­ing from the preschool to the pri­ma­ry school and up, that we un­der­stand ed­u­ca­tion is about learn­ing. It's OK to fail–as long as you don't stop at the fail­ure. I think there's a gen­er­al malaise in our school sys­tem that aris­es from every­one want­i­ng to 'get it right,' to pass an ex­am, as op­posed to: What can I learn from this to ap­ply to life?... Yes, we op­er­ate in­side of an ex­am­i­na­tion sys­tem aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly; but we are far more than peo­ple be­ing trained to sit an ex­am; we are hu­man be­ings be­ing trained to live life and to make a valid, mea­sur­able con­tri­bu­tion."

What did the stu­dents think was the most im­por­tant thing about the Cubes in Space project?"It was fun!"

Mak­ing ed­u­ca­tion in­ter­est­ing, mo­ti­vat­ing and rel­e­vant–now, there's a great les­son.

What is Cubes in Space?

Cubes in Space is a glob­al de­sign con­test in which teams of sec­ondary school stu­dents from around the world (ages 11 to 14) com­pete by de­vel­op­ing unique sci­ence ex­per­i­ments for launch in­to the up­per at­mos­phere. It is a part­ner­ship be­tween Ru­bik Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive, the Cana­di­an firm idoo­dle­soft­ware inc, the Col­orado Space Grant Con­sor­tium's Rock­Sat-C pro­gramme, and is sup­port­ed by the Sound­ing Rock­et Pro­gram Of­fice at Nasa's Wal­lops Flight Fa­cil­i­ty. The ex­per­i­ment is car­ried up 1,500 km in­to the at­mos­phere in the rock­et, and spends about five min­utes there, be­fore re­turn­ing to earth.

Dead­line for the last con­test was April 28; the win­ner, North­Gate Col­lege in St Au­gus­tine, was an­nounced on May 2, and their cube ex­per­i­ment was flown in­to the up­per at­mos­phere on June 26. The stu­dents re­cent­ly re­ceived prizes for their ef­forts in a cer­e­mo­ny at the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er's home on Sep­tem­ber 26.The 2015 glob­al Cubes in Space con­test is now open. For more in­fo, see: www.cubesin­space.com and http://idoo­dle­soft­ware.com.


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