Hi. I'm Michelle Handleman, I'm at the Visitors Center here at NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center and inside we have a big science fair happening
that's part of the GLOBE program. Let's go inside and meet some of the
participants. [music]
So the GLOBE program has been around for a very long time and students have these
protocols that are standardized across the whole world. But there's been
I think a missing element. This opportunity to showcase their work
in a competitive environment through like a science fair competition. And so that's what we're holding here today.
The first in a series of regional science fair competitions funded by the
National Science Foundation and organized in collaboration with the GLOBE program
office. All right well your project was finding out if animals are safer
under the snow. Tell me about that? Usually we have a lot more
snow than we did this year. So we wanted to see how the little animals
survive during the cold winters. And we knew that
snow insolated because we were reading articles that our teacher gave us. We tested
dissolved oxygen and PH and we found out that
e coli levels are really unsafe for our community. Before this I didn't
really know how bad the water actually was. The e coli is an absurd amount
it's well over the safe drinking and swimming level and we still have kids
playing in it and animals drinking from it. What's it like knowing
that NASA scientists are interested in this kind of work? I think it's
so cool. I've never really met a NASA scientist before
I haven't really met that many scientists ever actually and it's really cool just to experience this. It's
very exciting knowing that people that are very high in science
that do a lot of science for their job, their work are actually
interested in three kids from Deerfield. Has working on this
GLOBE project inspired you to study science
engineering, math in college? Yeah it's definitely opened my eyes
to different, like to broader terms of science. Like science doesn't have to just
be like, there's not just form of science. There's so many different horizons to it.
I've always wanted to do math and I've loved it. But just being here I've found
that there are jobs for mathematicians at NASA
you don't just have to major in science to be here. Why was this project
important to you personally? After starting to do the project
after realizing what an impact we make on the water, I realized that
I actually needed to take a stand to make the water safer.
For me I own five horses and so all of this manure and all of this
continuous nasty is running into our water. All the work these students are doing
are feeding into a database that's accessed by NASA scientists
and other scientists around the world. We can't predict what kind of jobs these students will be
competing for. So we have to prepare them as best we can to compete
in an environment that is a big mystery. And so making sure they have
the best skillsets to earn the best paying jobs and also to
support you know our economy as it moves forward is really important to me
and also to the agency. [music]