For more information on my RET experience at Boston University please visit my website:
https://sites.google.com/site/fdukajretbu/

Week 2 - The Project: 
         After a about a week and a half of reading through material from previous years we feel that we finally understand the big picture of our project. Our main goal is to build and launch a near-space balloon to collect data as well as pictures during its flight to a maximum height of roughly 100,000feet(19miles).
        In addition to the balloon launch we are to redesign a series of labs that lead to the final launch with each lab addressing a different issue/aspect of the near-space balloon. After a little reading throughout the old write ups we realized that there were two main problems with the old write ups: a)The language used was not very high school friendly and 2)they were not very inquiry based but rather cook book like. Together with Jay we decided to revamp each lab.  To address both those issues as well as answer many questions that we were asking as we read through the labs  for the first time we decided to add a teacher version. Among other things the teacher version will include the state and national science standards, a list of activities (hooks) to generate students interest for the labs, websites were the materials could be bought as well as a "Background Information" section where we would include information that the teacher should know before doing the lab. We also thought to include a series of pictures and video footage to go along with each lab to better illustrate what the lab would look like in practice.
         The balloon itself has several components and issues that need to be addressed before the launch; amongst other things we need to hack the Cannon cameras to take pictures continuously for a period of 2 hours, build a cut-off mechanism that would ensure the balloon comes back to the ground in case it does not explode when it gets high enough and the building of a temperature sensor that would work in high altitude. We decided that in the interest of time it would be wise to focus on ordering the materials needed before we moved on to any other tasks. Once the order list was completed and sent out we decided to work on revising the lab write ups to make them high school best practice labs; this part took more time than we thought.
         Further more we made sure to meet with Jean, a graduate student that will be helping us build one of the components of the balloon. Together we designed an action plan to complete this sub-project in a timely manner. Jean seemed very enthusiastic to be part of the team. Most of the afternoon was spent trying to understand the electronic circuit that  After compiling a list of materials necessary to build the cute-off mechanism we decided to call it quits until we received the rest of the materials.