An 11-year-old Indian student is the only participant from the UAE who has got her two experimental payloads for space through the space agency’s programme for budding young scientists.
Two experiments by Prerna Pai, a seventh grader at Sharjah’s Delhi Private School (DPS), are among the 100 selected experiments that will be fired into space on June 26, Gulf News reported.
Among those selected under the programme are seventy-five American students besides 25 students from the rest of the world.
Ms. Pai, an aspiring scientist, has been a regular participant in student activities.
She submitted two experiments that she called “To stick or not to stick” and “Time and pressure”.
The first experiment is about studying how different adhesives are likely to behave in space in the absence of atmospheric pressure. For this, Ms. Pai used a thermocol cube of 12 pieces in which each corner was stuck using a different kind of adhesive such as modelling clay, wax, cello tape, metal wire, thread, school glue and super glue.
The second involves two tiny bottles — one made of plastic and the other of glass — sealed with a modelling clay cork and placed in a cube.
The experiment will focus on how the bottles react to lack of atmospheric pressure: Will they disintegrate, get damaged or remain intact?
Once the experiments are back from space and mailed to her, Pai intends to begin research on the effects and film the results.
This article has been corrected for a factual error.
