Danielle will be starting her 17th year of teaching in the fall. This past year she taught Astronomy and Forensics at East River High School and has previously taught at University High School. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Earth and Space Science Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a Master's Degree in Educational Leadership from Stetson University. Danielle was a teacher intern at Kennedy Space Center and is an Observatory Facilitator at the Orlando Science Center.

Camp Connect - June 13-June 17, 2022

This summer, three high school students joined us in the lab for a week to help analyze data and calibrate tools to further our understanding of our Strata-2P parabolic flight. Eva, Lia, and Sebastian were part of Camp Connect Advanced and presented their research on Friday after working on Strata-2P for the week. For more information about Camp Connect visit https://stem.ucf.edu/camp-connect/#camp-connect-advanced.

MegaCon Orlando - May 20, 2022

We joined The Science Of... for a panel about Pop Culture and STEM Education. Check out their website for more ideas - https://thescienceof.org/.

HEY EDUCATORS! POP CULTURE + STEM EDUCATION!

12:00 pm in S310C MULTI-GENRE WORKSHOPS

Teach STEM with pop culture? You better believe it! As a strategy for engagement, participation, and students taking ownership of content, it can’t be beat. Come hear from teachers who use it in their classrooms and can help you move it into yours as well!

My ZeroG Experience - December 9, 2021

My alarm wakes me up at 3:45 am. I was so excited the night before I don't think I slept more than an hour or two. I take a chewable dramamine, a sip of diet coke, then head down to the hotel lobby to meet the rest of the team. Even as I ride the elevator down to the lobby, there are so many things running through my head. Remember how to switch out the SD cards. Remember how to switch out the batteries. Batteries in this pocket. SD cards in that pocket. Sick bag in this pocket. I really hope I don't need the sick bag. Don't be nervous. Did I measure the regolith correctly? Did I put that part of the tube together the right way? Don't forget the foot strap. (I forgot the foot strap.) Which tube is which? What needs to go in our bag? What cameras go where? So. Many. Things.

The drive to the airport from the hotel is only a few miles and I think we’re the first team to arrive. We're escorted through a hanger and over to our makeshift lab/assembly station/tube storage/regolith lab/everything area and get right to work. Our experiment has 10 tubes that all need to be placed in the rack before each flight so literally everyone has their hands full when we are escorted out to the plane. It's still dark but the nervous energy is making me almost skip to the plane. I've literally been waiting for this day since I learned about the “Vomit Comet” when I was at Space Camp at the age of 16. We board the plane through a skinny set of stairs and immediately get to work. We have to connect wires, test connections, test power, and I try my best to game-plan where I'll be able to put the cameras for each tube while trying to picture getting in the way of the science going on and worrying that I won’t put them at the right angle. I need to flash my phone in front of the GoPros so we can calibrate the flight data with timestamps later.

Just as quick as we're on the plane to load in, we're off again. I take a tiny sip of water and a few deep breaths because I know what’s coming soon is sure to be the most exciting flight of my life. I acquire my flight suit (and am thrilled that it’s dark blue, a color I don’t yet own) and put it on. Boarding pass and legal ID in hand and it's already time for some last-minute reminders. Don't forget to ask the coach for ginger, listen to the coach, breathe, lie down. Don't move your head. Don't take photos of the other experiments. Get some gum, gum should help. Time tp fly.

We walk over to our TSA screening point (some things about airports never change) even though we just loaded a bunch of tools, cameras, batteries, and moon dust on the plane.

I feel a sense of calm as we walk out to the plane, the sun is just starting to rise. Even though I haven't helped as much as I wanted to with how hectic the school year has been for me, I think I feel as prepared as I possibly can for this flight. The mild relaxation may be because I know this is our team’s first flight and there will be two more after mine. The team sort of considered this a “test flight” to make sure we knew we could get the data we needed and that all the systems built by different team members could work together. Data collection is really important on our third flight -Saturday- because that is the flight we get 10 Martian, 10 lunar, and 10 Zero g parabolas. Our flight is a few martian and lunar, then 25 zero G parabolas - I take a selfie with the plane and hope one last time that I don’t puke.

We find the seats indicated on our boarding passes - turns out we're in the front row of the seats on the plane. We buckle our seat belts and the zero-g coaches have to go through the same exact flight preparation that any commercial flight would - here is how your seatbelt works, masks will come down from the ceiling if we lose pressure, life jackets can be put on like this - I laugh a little inside my mask because this seems so crazy for the type of flight we're actually about to be on. As we're taxiing on the runway the runway seems bumpier than it should and we get a little nervous that our experiment is jiggling a little too much, but as soon as we take off things are much smoother. We only need to stay in our seats for a few minutes before we are allowed to take off her seat belts and go up to the storage unit that contains our bag full of cameras, batteries and everything else we hopefully remembered to pack. I grabbed it quickly and run back to the experiment so we can start assembling last-minute pieces that cannot be on the experiment at takeoff. (Those camera batteries are a lot of trouble apparently.) Every thing around us is about the same mildly frantic level, but I feel calm. We think we have everything ready to go when the coach asks us if everything is set. This is the moment we've been waiting for. Because our experiment is in the back of the plane, the coach with a megaphone is right next to us so we can hear all the commands to tell us what to do and what the plane is doing. During our training video we’ve been told We hear calls for each parabola, what kind of gravity it will have, when it starts, and when it ends. The first call I hear is “on the pull for Martian one!” I lie on the floor and I feel pressure on my chest - I was told I feel pressure on my chest but it definitely feels different than anything I've ever felt before. I also feel like maybe I'm just too excited that I'm finally here and I can’t even really process what's going on with my entire body. Before long, the coach calls out “pushing over” then “release” and we feel like we're on Mars. We bounce around a little, everyone is smiling and I know this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Our next Parabola is also Martian gravity (one-third of what you would feel on the earth) just to get us ready for what's to come. The next 3 parabolas are lunar gravity, so of course when they happen we do our best bouncing Apollo astronaut impressions, then the lunar (1/6th Earth gravity) G parabolas, it’s time for zero g.

Rhythmically, the coach yells commands “deep dive - coming out”, “on the pull”, “pushing over”, and, my personal favorite, “release!” and my body does exactly what it's supposed to do. I lie down, I float up and I try my hardest to focus on the science that I'm supposed to do but the feeling is indescribable. Every five parabolas we go straight and level so that everyone can have a minute or two to reset experiments or get themselves together for our next set of parabolas. Five at a time - they all go by much too quickly.

Admittedly, our experiment didn't work perfectly. I think maybe I didn't hit the buttons on the cameras that I should have. One of our tubes came loose, and we had to sit through a minute or two when we should have been lying down but I still felt fine. (My body felt fine - my brain felt terrible for maybe messing up one of the experiments that people had worked on for so long.)

Around me there are several experiments on the plane and every once in a while I look around to see what the other teams are up to but my focus is pretty much on our rack, our tubes, our cameras, our regolith. Every few parabolas a person gets pulled past me by a coach to get put in the seats because their stomach apparently cannot handle these parabolas… it is called the vomit comet for a reason, after all… but I try to ignore them and focus on the science. I'm so thankful that the people flying with me also were a;so seemingly having the best time ever and that they helped me to prepare for the flight in what seems like a million different ways. I'm also thankful for the people flying with me who managed to pull me down from the ceiling when I missed the foot strap a few times. I noticed a photographer taking photos, I noticed go pro cameras attached to the walls, but I was so focused on the science that it seems like only a few minutes before the coach is letting us know that we're on our last set of parabolas. The only thought I have is what do I have to do to get myself on this plane again?

The flights my team members took the next day and the day after were even better. Experiments didn’t come loose. Cameras recorded better footage. Experiments collected more data. Now, two months later, there are photos, videos, spreadsheets, what seems like a hundred different channels on slack to keep up with and so much to think about and do. Stay tuned, now the real fun starts - it’s time to science.

preparing the experiment for flight - Strata2P team photos

Preparing for flight - Strata2P team photos

Flight - photos from ZeroG

Post Flight Happiness (feat. broken tube)