4 March 2011
A Wonderful Illustration of Just how Thin Our Atmosphere Is
Posted by Dan Satterfield
We live in a very, very shallow layer of life giving air. It only takes the space shuttle 2 short minutes to get into space. The rest of the engine burn time is just for getting higher and going fast enough to reach orbit.
Look at the video below taken from a camera on the solid rocket booster. It separates from the shuttle at 2 minutes into the flight. When it separates, look at the Earth and the sky. You are, without doubt, in space.
I had an old boci ball that had been left out in the rain, a few small splits and lots of pealing paint. I used it as a model for explaining the thickness of the earth’s crust and atmosphere. I would do the math on the black board, get out a micrometer for the paint, peal off a bit, get a measurement and plug the results into the math problem on the board. The math worked pretty well for Ohio with its thick crust.
I love that-what a great illustration to back up the math!