Professor John Goree & Lou Datilio

Professor John Goree & Lou Datilio

• Gravity

• Weight

• Falling

• in Space: Microgravity (Weightlessness)

Q. What keeps you from floating out of your chair, when you are seated?

A. Gravity

Q. Why does everything dropped (here, the apples) fall downward?

A. Gravity

All things attract one another

Pictures taken (at regular intervals) of a ball falling

Falling

All objects fall at the same speed (without air resistance)

Falling

Demonstration: quarter and feather

Throwing a ball at different speeds

Falling

Throwing it hard enough might make it go into orbit around the earth

Falling

Demonstration:

Java applet

www.physics.uiowa.edu/~stille/

(Fowler’s Physics Applets)

Weight

Demonstration:

weight on a bathroom scale

Weight and Weightlessness inside an elevator

Weight

Weightlessness:• inside a falling elevator • in a spacecraft,

They are alike, because both are falling

Video: free fall

astronauts inside their spacecraft

Weightlessness

Space Station months

Space shuttle <17 days

Sounding rockets 10 min

KC-135 20 sec

Drop towers 5 sec

Vomit Comet

“Microgravity” = “Weightlessness”

Weightlessness

Parabolic airplane flights = vomit comet

Microgravity

Spacecraft: Mir Space Station

Mir: Spring, 2000

International Space Station

“ISS”

ISS - Assembly Sequence

1998 - 2006

International Space Station

International Space Station

Space

Shuttle

Video - Space Shuttle launch

Demonstration cars

Video Astronauts in Space Shuttle

Demonstration: basketball

Video: basketball in space

Microgravity

projects

at the Univ. of Iowa Physics Dept.

PKE - Plasmakristall Experiment Germany, Russia, U.S.

1999 - Parabolic flight tests

2000-01 - ISS• Dec. 2000 - launch• 2001 - the 1st physical sciences

experiment on ISS

PKE flight hardware with 1st & 3rd ISS crews

PKE accommodation

Zvezda (Russian Service Module)

ISS - assembly 1RJuly 25, 2000

Inside Zvezda

Inside Zvezda

Inside Zvezda

PKE logo

• Launched:

• on Russian Progress rocket

• from Baikonur, Kazakhstan

• March, 2001

• Will be done:

• end of 2001

• hardware will go through destructive re-entry

PKE

Demonstration:

Screen up

Water balloon