By Mr. Elliot

Science Rocks!! Ms. Griego and Mr. Elliot’s life science classes went into orbit in November and December! As participants in the NASA and National Space Biomedical Research Institute experiments for the International Space Station, the students followed the effects of the microgravity environment on the web building behavior of the Metapeira spider and the life cycle of the Painted Lady butterfly. The students observed and cared for their own experimental subjects here at Aurora Hills as a control to the experiments occurring on the space station. Daily, we observed the behavior and progress of the spiders and butterflies via images directly downloaded to the internet from cameras on the space station.  Although not all of our hypotheses proved to be true, we all learned lots about how microgravity can affect living things and how our own environment affects behavior in animals. We received generous support from The Butterfly Pavilion and Denver Museum of Nature and Science for our experiments.