Jennifer Thompson, Class of 2004, Experiment on YouTube 07/31/2008 »

Dr. McMullen forwarded this message and YouTube link from Jennifer, who is a Physics major at Rhodes.


I heard from NASA about two weeks ago, and my team's microgravity proposal was accepted, so we are going to spend the summer at NASA experimenting in Zero G!!

The research I did over the summer involved blowing up aircraft panels using C-4 explosives. I actually handled the explosives quite a bit and the purse that I carry with me everywhere came with me to the testing facilities. Complicating matters, we had a lag period of about 20 minutes between each test when we waited for the room to clear. While we waited, we played cards; explosive residue and soot on our hands transferred to the cards, which I carry with me in my purse. The two hour part comes in when you try to explain to TSA that the reason you have C-4 residue on your hands is that you worked over the summer blowing up airplanes...

In this microgravity experiment you can view the result of the team's work - the world's first purely electrostatic binary orbit.  <