01/30/2012

Toronto teens send Lego man into space

Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad launched a weather balloon carrying Styrofoam capsule with a Lego man holding a Canadian flag, four cameras and a cell phone with a GPS app. It floated down to Earth 97 minutes later on a parachute stitched together by the 17-year-olds. The pair tracked down the capsule in a field 75 miles away and discovered their astonishing footage from an estimated 15 miles above sea level. It cost $400 and took four months of free Saturdays to build the craft. It wasn’t a school assignment, the teens just thought the project would be cool.

■Class discussion: Would you spend four months working on a project just because you thought it was cool? What kind of project would you like to work on? Find newspaper articles about other experiments or projects accomplished by teens. The Toronto teens checked to make sure the flight wouldn’t be dangerous or illegal. Were others as careful, or did they run into trouble? The teens said they were inspired by a Web video showing an experiment by MIT students. Can you find a science project on the Web that you would like to try?