As part of the project to bring science closer to UK students, data from the International Space Station were made available by NASA and the Institute for Research in Schools (IRIS) to the children for analysis experiments. One of the students, however, spotted an error.
Miles Soloman, a 17-year-old secondary school student from Sheffield corrected NASA. He was in his physics class looking at spreadsheets of radiation levels aboard the ISS, when he saw a negative number.
Kid Corrects NASA's Data From The ISS
Understanding the problem, Miles sent an email to NASA to alert them about the problem. The boy had noticed that sensors are recording a negative number instead of when there is no radiation.
The boy's physics teacher, James O'Neill, said that they were discussing data and Soloman perked up all of a sudden, not understanding why there is a negative energy on the spreadsheet.
"The first thing I thought there was, well, you can't have negative energy. And then we realized this was an error. So we emailed NASA. Even now that sounds quite cool. I emailed NASA," Soloman noted.
NASA specialists were aware that this phenomenon does happen, but they thought these recordings only come out once or twice a year, according to Larry Pinsky, professor of physics at the University of Houston.
What the kid's email did was alert NASA that the problem's recurrence is notably higher than they thought.
"It's pretty cool. You can tell your friends, I just emailed NASA and they're looking at the graphs that I've made," Soloman noted.
The American space agency appreciated the boy's correction and invited him to study the issue.
"What we got given was a lot of spreadsheets, which is a lot more interesting than it sounds. I went straight to the bottom of the list and I went for the lowest bits of energy there were," Soloman declared.
Children all over the UK are allowed to look at the ISS data, as part of a TimPix project from NASA and IRIS. The project gives them the chance to search for anomalies and get accustomed to scientific patterns that may eventually make them pursue science in the future.
IRIS, An Institute For A Science Career
Professor Becky Parker, who is also the director of IRIS, noted that this kind of expansion of science toward the classroom could help more kids become interested in following a scientific career.
"IRIS brings real scientific research into the hands of students no matter their background or the context of the school. The experience inspires them to become the next generation of scientists," noted Parker.
According to the IRIS website, the institute's main goal is to improve the experience of science both for the students and their teachers. Since technology now allows real-time access to information, today's kids can go through scientific data and even collaborate with top-level scientists worldwide.
"They can put an experiment in space and contribute to scientific discovery. IRIS helps students and their teachers do this," notes the IRIS website.
