By Stephanie Grinnell

Staff Writer

Biddeford Middle School students were rocketed into orbit Friday during Space Day, a day-long event featuring guest speakers from various space and aviation fields and activities designed to encourage students to think about the effort it takes to send a rocket into space.

Bates College Professor Gene Clough showed students how the moon’s composition is analyzed and how scientists determine which craters were created first.

“The moon is a totally different kind of place,” he said.

Students participated in a discussion about the characteristics of the moon’s surface and used what they learned to determine which craters were formed first. Clough said the objects that struck the moon were much smaller than the crater created upon impact. He compared dropping a bowling ball on the beach to the action that creates craters. He said the objects striking the moon’s surface are moving much faster than a bowling ball would hit the sand. 

“You have to think about how things happen, what happened first? What happened later?” he said.

Clough said the largest crater on the moon is more than 1,000 miles across. 

Teacher Tom Sferes greeted students coming inside after viewing a helicopter and a rocket launched with a bicycle pump, asking them what they thought of the day.

“Great!” “Very educational,” and “Cool” were a few of the responses from the passing students. 

The helicopter was arranged by School Department Administrative Assistant Diane Perro. Her son, Adam, is training to be a helicopter pilot and showed the students the inner workings of the aircraft, letting them climb into the pilot and co-pilot seats. 

Activities throughout the school got students up and moving with a paper airplane contest, glider contest and stomp rockets, which are rockets launched by stomping a foot on an air-filled bubble. A step up from the stomp rockets was the foam-tipped rocket launched with a bicycle pump in front of the school. Students and teachers took turns pumping the bicycle pump with different flexible plastic discs, which slowed the flow of air, allowing pressure to build up and launch the rocket. One flight soared out of sight until it began its downward fall and landed harmlessly on the grass. 

Displays in the halls depicted space travel, freeze dried food, a life sized astronaut created by an art class and signatures of the students that were flown in space June 8 through June 22, 2007. The signatures orbited the Earth 219 times during the 250th space shuttle flight, according to the attached information. 

Other speakers taught the students about astronomy, the Mars landing, astrobiology, rocketry, air traffic control, principals of flight and satellites. Various school committee members poked in and out throughout the day and special guests were invited as well, including former Biddeford Mayor Wallace Nutting and his wife Jane.

Space Day was organized by teacher Barbara Fortier, who has taken the lead in the NASA Explorer School status assigned to the middle school, said Sferes. Fortier was not able to attend Space Day because she was in Washington D.C. being recognized as Maine’s presidential award winner for excellence in math and science, Sferes said. 

Sferes said all presenters paid their own way to come to the middle school.   

Contact Stephanie Grinnell by calling 282-4337 ext. 213 or email news@inthecourier.com.