Riverview Grade School Launched Weather Balloon to the
Edge of Earth’s Atmosphere
Spring Bay, IL—Up, up and away! Science teacher
Emily Dawson and her junior high students at Riverview Grade
School are pushing the boundaries of their classroom to the very
edge of the earth’s atmosphere. In an exciting, hands-on
learning experience, the students launched their own weather balloon 100,000 feet up to collect weather data, take photos and see
their world from an entirely new perspective.
The launch took place Wednesday, May 22 at the Caterpillar Inc. Edwards
Demonstration and Learning Center in front of an audience of 300 students from East Peoria, Metamora
and Brimfield. Students gathered at 9:00 a.m. for set-up, assembly and related activities,
and the launch took place around 10:50 a.m. Teachers, students and citizens everywhere will
be able to witness the morning’s activities, from set-up to loss of visible flight trajectory, through
a webcast on the WTVP-Public Media website.
The launch is the central focus of a multidiscipline unit on weather, using science,
language arts, and literature classes cooperatively to plan, research, analyze and report on the
real world application of the information taught within the classroom.
The school project was made possible through funding from PNC’s FirstGrant to
Riverview Junior High teachers Emily Dawson, JoAnn Lowry-Emery and Luann Kuehn. The FirstGrant
program is designed to help classroom teachers throughout central Illinois accomplish creative
and innovative projects they would otherwise be unable to fund because of budget limitations,
and it is supported by the Ruby K. Worner Trust and the PNC Foundation, which receives its
principal funding from The PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE: PNC).
The helium required to fill the balloon was provided by the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign and arranged by WILL-TV. The launch site and equipment are courtesy of Caterpillar
Inc. Production and broadcast made possible by WTVP-Public Media with support from WILL.
This project was inspired by PBS
LearningMedia—a free digital library of more than 30,000
classroom-ready, curriculum targeted materials.
Once the Balloon is released you can track its progress using the
website bellow. GPS points are transmitted every 10 minutes until it reaches
60,000 feet. When balloon bursts at 100,000 feet and the parachute deploys GPS
updates will begin again once it returns to the 60,000 foot level.