Students in a Huntington Beach classroom recently spent part of a day nervously watching a clock ticking in the corner of a projection screen.
The Daily Pilot reported this week on the scene at Brethren Christian School, where speakers counted down the minutes, relaying to viewers the status of the unmanned Cygnus NG-11 cargo vessel preparing to launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia.
The vessel contained a science project designed by the school’s students that’s heading to the International Space Station.
Members of the engineering club at the private school have been working on the project since the beginning of the school year, according to the Daily Pilot.
The experiment includes two tests. One is based on a crystal oscillator, which uses a vibrating crystal to create an electrical signal with an exact frequency. It will monitor that frequency to see how a clock is affected by the elements of space.
Additionally, the experiment will seek to re-prove Albert Einstein’s theory of relative time in space, comparing the performance of two identical clocks, one in space and one on Earth.
“The hope is that (it’s) gonna work,” sophomore Paige Coultrup told the Daily Pilot. “Even if it doesn’t work, we’re still gonna gather data so we can do it better in the future and gather more data. That’s the point of scientific experiments.”
Here are some more education articles from across the region for the week ending April 19.
- A California legislator wants to ban inexperienced teachers in programs such as Teach for America from working in predominantly low-income schools, saying they lack the preparation to work effectively with the neediest students.
- Congresswoman Katie Porter spent a day this week discussing immigration, child abuse, gun violence and the environment during a school visit. The issues were brought up by eighth-graders at Jeffrey Trail Middle School in Porter’s hometown of Irvine.
- Newport Harbor, Edison and Huntington Beach high schools are among 14 area schools participating in the Congressional Art Competition, which this year has come to the 48th Congressional District for the first time.
- An EdSource analysis of teacher salaries and rents reveals just how crushing California’s housing crisis has become for many teachers.
- A Sage Hill School student has founded a club to encourage male peers to join the conversation about ‘rape culture’ and the male role in it.
- OCDE has introduced a new program that combines mindfulness, yoga movement and specific social-emotional learning skills focused on self-awareness and self-management.
- Four Orange County districts have been recognized among the Best Communities for Music Education by the NAMM Foundation, which also presented awards to three local campuses.
- Students from across Orange County will exhibit more than 200 STEM-based designs demonstrating creativity and innovation at next month’s ocMaker Challenge.
- Educators, business partners and community leaders gathered recently to celebrate the launch of the Orange County Civic Learning Partnership, aimed at equipping the next generation with the rights and responsibilities that are foundational to American democracy.
This is the part where we encourage you to keep up with local education news stories by bookmarking the OCDE Newsroom, subscribing for emailed updates or following us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.