A “hands-on” Microgravity Research Team two-semester engineering research project course sequence has been developed and offered at West Virginia University over the past 15 years. The primary course goal is to provide students with a hardware-oriented, hands-on, open-ended experimental research project experience. During the first semester, the teams of four to 12 undergraduate students develop an experimental concept and hypothesis to be studied in microgravity conditions and then submit a detailed technical proposal for their experiment for review by the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program, or more recently to the Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program. Twelve successful experiments have been selected and flown aboard microgravity research aircraft in the past 15 years, with the 2014–2015 team working to develop an experiment to propose for any parabolic trajectory student program that may become available in the near future. Because of cancellation of the program during the 2014–2015 year, over the past year the course has been significantly modified to use a new 1.25 s West Virginia University drop tower and a general aviation aircraft, to obtain low-gravity experimental data, to continue the program. These program modifications are briefly described, and a return of the program is advocated.
Development of a Microgravity Research Team Project Course
Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer ; 30 , 3 ; 622-634
2016-03-29
13 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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