Jackson County Schools, TTU Partner to Fly Weather Balloon

Gainesboro Elementary Teacher Michael Vigeant recntly used the assistance of Jackson County High School and Tennessee Tech students to help his third-graders learn about weather.

Vigeant says he wanted an interesting way to teach his students about weather patterns by offering them a unique perspective.

“The purpose of the balloon launch itself, it’s like watching weather in action because you can see the wind,” Vigeant says. “With the direction the balloon travels, it’s basically dictated by wind. You can’t control it, it just goes wherever the wind blows, basically. The kids can see it, we can follow it because it’s satellite-tracked so they can follow the wind currents and see that.”

Vigeant says the high school and TTU students went above and beyond in helping him teach his lesson to the students.

“The high school, they designed to our parameters, the actual payload, and what the (TTU) STEM Center did is they 3D-Printed it for us,” Vigeant says. “It was a lot smaller than the actual design, so it was a lot lighter and a lot more stable. The STEM Center also lent a lot of their expertise into the designing of it.”

Vigeant says the balloon traveled much further than previous attempts and even set a TTU record by traveling over 400 miles before landing just outside Roanoke, Virginia.

“We’re already talking about our next launch,” Vigeant says. “We had some problems. We had some recording issues, only one camera worked so we have to work out how we can make our batteries better. We’re looking at making the next one solar-powered, which has its own set of problems… I don’t know how we can go farther than we did, because 400 miles is pretty impressive.”

Vigeant says he hopes to take the balloon to greater heights when his class pursues the project in the future.