By Susan Green
Free Press Staff Writer
The Burlington Free Press, March 31, 1999 - Page 1C

Earthlings know oil and water do not mix, but Kara Williams of Williston and Elise Corbally of Burlington wanted to find out what happens to those substances in outer space.

The 12-year-old seventh-graders at Christ the King School devised an experiment in early March to see if that law of physics would hold true during weightlessness.

The girls learned the results during their science class Tuesday, when five University of Vermont mechanical engineering students landed at the Burlington parochial school to explain how a bottle of oil and water reacted to zero gravity during a recent NASA flight that took off from Houston.

Armed with their own elaborate fruit-fly experiment onboard a KC-135A aircraft that climbed to 35,000 feet, the college contingent had agreed to bring along the low-tech project created by Kara and Elise.
 

"Water is the heavier substance but, in microgravity, things have no weight," explained Mark Miller, a UVM doctoral candidate who visited teacher Leo Racht's class a month ago to encourage the youngsters to concoct an appropriate experiment. Tuesday, the assembled adolescents watched video footage of the fruit-fly team happily tumbling around the gravity-free aircraft. Miller told the students NASA officials call it "the vomit comet" because weightlessness can lead to upset stomachs. "Does vomit fly in the air?" asked Jordan Tipson, 13, of Colchester.

University of Vermont student Mark Miller (left) asks the students of Leo Racht's class at Christ the King School in Burlington if they think oil and water will mix in zero gravity. Elise Corbally, 12, of Burlington, and Kara Williams' 12, of Williston, designed the experiment that rode with Miller and his team on a zero-gravity simulating KC-135A aircraft. The answer: They mix.

"They do give you barf bags," said UVM senior Dan Cheung, adding that microgravity also means gases in the human body expand.

"You're supposed to leave your social graces at the door," said UVM senior Noel Nutting of Essex junction, as fellow mechanical engineering students Dan Barnett and Megan Carroll smiled.

The seventh-graders seemed thrilled to hear about bodily functions in zero gravity.

The video evidence proved oil and water do mix elsewhere in the cosmos. Proud their simple experiment had traveled to the final frontier, Elise and Kara gave each other a high-five and proclaimed: "Kids rule!"