Greybull student attends Teton STEM Academy on UW campus

Adeline Kunkel, a freshman-to-be at Greybull High School, was among the 24 Wyoming students who explored the interdisciplinary sciences relating to a mission to mars during the University of Wyoming’s Teton STEM Academy held June 16-23 in Laramie.

Campers built heat shields that protected their eggs — face-painted and substituting for astronauts mimicking reentry into Earth’s atmosphere after a space mission. To be deemed successful, the heat shields had to withstand high temperatures from a constant flame emanating from a blowtorch for two minutes. More important, after the experiment, the yolk inside the egg had to be preserved to determine the astronaut had survived the ordeal.

In the end, some smoked. Others got scorched. A few totally went up in flames.

“We were really nervous, but we were really confident,” says Kapri Miller, who will be a freshman this fall at Riverton High School. She and teammates Lily Ormond, a freshman-to-be at Riverton High School, and Kunkel clasped hands and exchanged high-fives after it was revealed their astronaut — er, egg — survived.

Matt Bryant, a science teacher from Miami Valley School in Dayton, Ohio, kept careful watch over the scientific experiments and operated the blowtorch.

“It’s kind of what I expected -- mostly success, a few failures,” he says, standing outside the Michael B. Enzi STEM Facility, where the experiments took place.

During the exercise, campers watched a video before choosing the materials they thought would be most effective in constructing a worthy heat shield. Materials to pick from included aluminum foil, cork, cotton balls, lasagna noodles, spackle material used for drywall, steel wool sponges and yarn. Campers had up to 100 points of credits to spend on materials. To make the experiment more challenging, the teams received better scores if their 4-inch heat shields were constructed with less than the full 100-point allotment.

The team of Kelton Stucki, who will be a freshman at Riverton High School, and a student who only went by the name Cox, a freshman-to-be at Cheyenne Central High School, clenched their fists in victory when their egg survived. Before the exercise, the two explained they built their heat shield using three layers of aluminum foil, one layer of sponge and two layers of cork with spackle. The two were confident, as they surmised cork is a hard material to burn.

However, Stucki spoke too soon, as a team of teachers built a successful heat shield that only required 50 points of materials. A team of counselors followed up with a heat shield that only required 55 points of materials -- and withstood four minutes of heat from the blowtorch.

“This (constructing heat shields) is a new activity. We have not done this before,” says Chip Kobulnicky, a professor in the UW Department of Physics and Astronomy and director of the Teton STEM Academy. “Some material breaks away and takes the heat with it. Other materials do not conduct heat as well. I don’t think the thickness of the shield matters as much as the conductivity of the material and then how much it insulates from the outside.”

The camp explores the scientific and technical challenges presented by a human mission to Mars from activities based in physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, health sciences, engineering, mathematics, arts and communications.  

During the hands-on camp, students were allowed to design a Martian colony; choose landing sites on Mars; learn about digital communication; explore solar and hydrogen energy sources; take a field excursion in the Snowy Range; test for signs of life in soil samples; interpret geological features; and visit UW’s 2.3-meter Wyoming Infrared Observatory on Jelm Mountain near Laramie.

Due to a generous gift from the estate of the late Harry and Mary Ann Lawroski, of Teton County, the Teton STEM Academy was free to the campers.