Burleson Elementary students, from left, Jennifer Soto, Nick Pershin and Conner Bodine react to an experiment performed by HHS engineering team member Tiffany Pittman. | Brent Maze

HHS engineering team performs experiments with FEB students

F.E. Burleson Elementary School students got a chance to help perform experiments that will help the Hartselle High School engineering team prepare its NASA payload experiment.

HHS Engineering and chemistry teacher Kim Pittman said her team is working with NASA and the University of Alabama-Huntsville to design a payload to characterize the polar cyclones on Venus.

“The point of this activity was two-fold: to engage the community in what we as an engineering team are doing and, in a broader sense, what NASA does,” Pittman said in an email, “and to conduct experiments that would provide needed information for the design of our payload.”

The Burleson Elementary students rotated among 10 different experiment stations, each dealt with methods to try to study Venus’ polar cyclones.

Pittman said there are 13 other high schools that are also working on some kind of a payload to travel to Venus.

The final design will be presented to a team of NASA engineers/scientists on Dec 13. On that day, the NASA team will determine which high school payload is the winning project.