The Space Lab competition from YouTube invited young scientists to submit an experiment for the chance to have it performed by NASA aboard the International Space Station.
From among thousands of entrants, six regional winners have been chosen. In North America, Emerald Bresnahan of Plainville, Massachusetts, was chosen for her Snowflakes in Space experiment.
Emerald suggests that galaxies might form in a similar way to snowflakes. She wants to test how snowflakes form in the absence of gravity to better understand the link between them and other complex shapes like galaxies. Will these tiny structures give us the answers to some of our biggest questions about the Universe?
You can also view her entry video on YouTube.
Although Emerald was one of three regional winners in the 17-18 year-old-group, she was not chosen as the global winner. An 18 year-old teen named Amr Mohamed won the global title for that age group. Amr’s experiment will go up on the ISS. Only the global winners have their experiments performed on the ISS, (there was a 14-16 year-old group chosen as a global winner as well). Amr’s experiment involves sending a jumping spider up to see if it can still catch its prey or will figure something else out to do so. You can see all their experiments and introduction videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_939458&list=PL1FD6A3DB96446B43&src_vid=LzeVMLJXjK4
To get a fuller explanation of Emerald’s experiment, you can see her talk about it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuqMGfBJw6I&feature=plcp&context=C4f3ac1bVDvjVQa1PpcFMnCiuj9s4M7tIZ3nnVvWWAh-mJqYplEyw=