With help from fire truck, junior high students find eclipse experiment stuck in tree

The highlight of Monday’s eclipse for most of Southern Illinois was seeing totality. But afterward, the fun was just beginning for a group of metro-east junior high students who had to chase down a $500 weather balloon they launched from Saluki Stadium in Carbondale. Ninety minutes later, it would take the help of the Carterville Fire Department to retrieve it.

The Balloonatics, made up of seventh- and eighth-grade students from Belle Valley, Smithton, Signal Hill and Harmony Emge Junior High schools, had launched their cargo from the 50-yard line to measure radiation levels, capture images of the moon’s shadow with a GoPro camera, and record the atmosphere’s temperature and pressure at various heights in the sky.

Calculations showed the cargo could land in the Shawnee National Forest, but a later prediction pegged it heading for a lake. No one would know for sure.

After totality came and went, the bus driver left to get the bus and swung around to pick up the students, Joshua Strausbaugh, a teacher at Belle Valley School in Belleville, said. They stopped near John A. Logan College, checked the coordinates again, and found the GPS pinging to a country home in a wooded area in Carterville.

Strausbaugh got out of the bus and knocked on the front door. An older man who watched the eclipse with his sixth-grade grandson greeted him. After Strausbaugh explained the situation, the grandfather grew intrigued, and he and his grandson embarked with the roughly 15 students from the club, their chaperones and the bus driver included, through the woods.

The group walked in a half-mile spiral, circling the GPS device. It turned out it was really just a quarter of a mile into the woods, hanging 40 to 50 feet on the strong limb of an oak tree.

“We had our own personal ladder, but it wasn’t going that high,” Strausbaugh said.

He solicited the students for how to get it down. One suggested cutting off the limb, but they didn’t have to do that. The tree was actually on the property of an auto-body shop, which let the group get the cargo.

Strausbaugh called the fire department, and the chief came out with a small crew that edged a firetruck in through the trees and up to the branch.

A firefighter strapped into the ladder and hooked the instruments to his belt. When he reached the bottom, everyone cheered.

Data crunching

With the dangerous part over, the numbers-crunching began, and Strausbaugh set up a card table he stowed in his Jeep so the students could have a first look at the data. The balloon had traveled exactly 19,783 feet into the air, or almost 23 miles, just a few hundred feet below the highest they thought the balloon could go.

The group celebrated by having dinner at Dairy Queen. Even now, days after the eclipse, the four eighth-grade Balloonatics from Smithton were still enthralled by the experiment.

“It was super cool,” Grace Casey said. She didn’t think the sky would get as dark as it did, but “there was a sunset all around us.”

Macey Slightom’s favorite part was catching a glimpse of the corona.

“It just really amazed me how it can happen like that,” she said, calling it a “once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

The experiment also kindled their interest in science more, just as the club was intended to.

“I did start to enjoy science more,” said Piper Brown. Earlier, she thought it was a boring class, but she liked how the weather balloon was hands-on. She hopes to participate in more launches.

Lizzy Ludwig said she is already thinking about going into neurology someday.

“Overall, it was a success,” Strausbaugh said.

Back in the classroom the day after the eclipse, he shared news of the event with his classes and asked them why he was doing so.

Because it was cool? they asked.

No, it was because they could do the same thing, he said. He asked how many would like to participate. Nearly everyone raised their hand.

“A lot of people see science as just a subject,” Strausbaugh said, “but, really, science is a process. It’s a process of inquiry and investigation. A start to an end. It’s not about the ending. It’s about the process along the way.”

“The adventure is what makes it so exciting,” he said.

This story was originally published August 24, 2017 at 7:00 AM with the headline "With help from fire truck, junior high students find eclipse experiment stuck in tree."