Jill Marconi, STEM teacher at Poland Middle School, explains an experiment to gauge surface tension with a SPHERO robot placed in a glass jar with water. Marconi will be going to Florida to work with a microgravity team with NASA later this year to develop a more perfect way to measure fuel while in space.

POLAND — Poland Middle School STEM teacher Jill Marconi is retiring after 18 years teaching, but she literally is going out with a bang.

At the beginning of the school year, Marconi applied to join a program developed by a professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin, who early in 2022 received a $650,000 grant to develop new technologies for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Marconi was later picked to be one of 10 teachers nationwide to be part of the embedded teachers program developed by Kevin Crosby of Carthage. More than 100 of her STEM students at Poland Middle School throughout the year have been helping to develop tests of microgravity technology that Marconi will be presenting to Crosby and his microgravity team this fall in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

During the weeklong trip, Marconi and other middle school and high school teachers will be flying to help conduct small experiments and demonstrations on parabolic flights. She said NASA will take the results and hopefully improve its in-flight technology.

“NASA wants to develop a way to perfect the measuring of fuel in conditions of zero or microgravity,” Marconi said in explaining that her students are perfecting the five best experiments she can take with her to Florida.

Marconi said the teachers will be spending some time in zero gravity as the Carthage College website states the embedded teachers will be able to spend about 11 minutes in free fall.

Marconi said Crosby, even though he prolificly uses scientific terms, presents his material in a way that is easily digestible for both teacher and student.

“He has a way about him that he doesn’t make you feel dumb,” she said.

In addition to his duties at Carthage College, Crosby also works as a senior scientist at NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he works on the Modal Propellant Gauging Project.

On his website, Crosby talks about the longtime problem that NASA had faced in measuring fuel in flight, dating back to the moon landings of the Apollo program of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Alarms went off during the first moon landing involving Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

“The engineers had thought they had run out of fuel,” Crosby said, noting that Apollo 11 wasn’t 30 seconds away from oblivion after all. “They didn’t have a good way to see how much fuel was left in the tank.”

Crosby said because of this problem, space missions have two extra fuel cells that can cost millions of dollars.

During some class time last week, Marconi and her students worked with water in a jar using Sphero robots — four of the ball-like objects she received from Carthage College — to test the surface tension of the liquid. The class also tested to see how many drops of water could fit on the face of a penny.

“Students today get bored unless you introduce things that are new and exciting,” Marconi said. “In these experiments, we are learning that there is gravity even in space and we have to find out how to use it to our advantage.”

Marconi has been trying to develop these experiments with the different six-grade classes taking the seven-week STEM course at the middle school.

Sixth-grader Lucas Schuster said he loves coming to the STEM class.

“I always liked to build things with my LEGOS, but my grandpa and dad said this (class) would definitely help,” Lucas said, noting he has learned to make arcade-like games and tiny houses through 3D printing.

Marconi explained that her students use simple everyday things — as she pointed to a cabinet full of recyclable material — to make learning more fun. Even though she’ll be retired from the classroom, Marconi said she is excited to bring back the results from her experiments in Florida next school year to present them to the soon-to-be seventh graders.

“My son is a rocket scientist, and he is truly jealous of me because I will be working with the NASA scientists,” she laughed.

gvogrin@tribtoday.com