NASA Drop Tower Competition
for Student Teams

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DIME & WING

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Dropping In a Microgravity Environment

What If No Gravity


UPDATE: June 15, 2009

The DIME program is being RESTARTED!

More information will be announced in the near future. The information presently on this web page is subject to change until otherwise noted here.

The DIME program is being expanded in two ways.

  1. One big addition is a component for student teams in grades 6, 7, 8, and 9. We're calling this What If No Gravity? or WING for short.
  2. The high school component is being expanded for additional teams to participate. Four teams will still be eligible to travel to NASA Glenn for the April 2010 Drop Days. We will have additional teams build their experiments and send them to NASA Glenn for NASA staff to drop them in the drop tower. The resulting data will provided to the team.

Nancy R. Hall - Questions?
NASA Glenn Research Center

What can be found on this web site:

  1. Introduction

  2. DIME announcement - HOW TO ENTER!

  3. Summary of the teams from past DIME competitions

  4. Helpful Information -background material to help you to understand DIME

  5. Check for possible financial support from your state's space grant consortium

  6. Acknowledgements

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Introduction

DIME & WING are components of a NASA competition program which allows teams to design and build a science experiment which will then be operated in a NASA microgravity drop tower facility. This program is a project-oriented activity which lasts one school year for the selected teams. A DIME team will be comprised of high-school-aged students while a WING team will be comprised of students in grades 6-9. Teams may be formed from (for example) a science class, a group of classes, a science club, a Scout troop, or simply a bunch of friends. A team (whether DIME or WING) must have an adult advisor, such as a teacher, parent, or technical consultant.

Sponsored by NASA JSC
Teaching From Space Office
The Teaching From Space Office facilitates education opportunities that use the unique environment of human spaceflight. The TFS Office is located in the Astronaut Office of the NASA Johnson Space Center and works with crewmembers to facilitate live in- flight education downlinks, education payload operations, and education demonstration activities.

Early in the school year, teams interested in competing will develop an experiment concept, write a proposal for an experiment, and submit the proposal to NASA. It is expected that the ideas and concepts for the experiments be created by the students. In addition, the proposals should be the work of the student team members.

A NASA panel of engineers and scientists will evaluate all of the submitted proposals and select the top-ranked proposals for DIME and for WING. These teams will then continue their experiment development and fabrication leading to operation in the NASA drop tower in April.

DIME

NASA will provide funding to four Tier I selected teams. Up to four student team members and one adult advisor from each Tier I team will be invited to attend DIME Drop Days in April at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. During DIME Drop Days, the team representatives will conduct their experiment in the NASA 2.2 Second Drop Tower, analyze their data, tour NASA facilities, and participate in workshops.

NEW FOR 2010!
Approximately four additional DIME proposals will be selected for Tier II participation. These teams will design their experiments, build it, and send it to NASA Glenn. The drop tower staff will then operate the experiment in the 2.2 Second Drop Tower and provide the video and other data to the team for the team's analysis. These experiments will be subject to the same constraints and safety review as the Tier I experiments.

A final report is expected after the results of the drop tower operations are analyzed by the student teams.

WING

NEW FOR 2010!
The NASA panel will select top-ranked proposals from those submitted for the WING program. The exact number may depend on the number and quality of proposals received, but will most likely be more than ten.

Recognizing the age of WING team members in grades 6-9, these experiments may be more simple than those proposed under the DIME program for high school students. The selected teams will then construct their experiments, test them at the home location, and then send the experiment to NASA Glenn. The NASA DIME staff will then inspect the experiments for safety and then drop the experiment in the 2.2 Second Drop Tower in March and April. Data from the drop will then be sent to the team for the team's analysis and final report. The experiment will be returned to the team.

The DIME and WING program is open for student teams located in all fifty states of the U.S., Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. Please note that only U.S. citizens will be allowed to attend DIME Drop Days at NASA as part of DIME Tier I teams.

Important dates (subject to change):


Proposal postmark date for 2009/2010 school year
 		 November 2, 2009
Selection announcement December 18, 2009

DIME Drop Days at NASA Glenn
April 19-23, 2010

NOTE: Some of this material is in the Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (pdf) and requires Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader to access it. Acrobat Reader is available FREE from Adobe.
This does not imply an endorsement by NASA of this product or company.

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How to Enter the DIME and WING Competitions

 

Stay informed about DIME and WING
TO SUBSCRIBE:
Sign up to get news via e-mail as DIME and WING are developed. Send us an e-mail today.

The basic steps of this team competition are:

  1. Form a team of appropriately aged students with at least one adult advisor
  2. Research microgravity science and develop a research question
  3. Prepare and submit a proposal according to the guidelines and rules in the DIME Program Announcement or WING Program Announcement (see below)
After NASA selects the winning proposals:
  1. If selected, the team designs and builds their experimental apparatus
  2. Four students and one adult advisor from each selected team come to NASA Glenn for DIME Drop Days in April to operate their experiment in the drop tower
  3. Each selected team prepares a final report and submits it to NASA

How To Get Started

The detailed instructions for entering the DIME competition will be made available on a separate page in the coming months.

Alternatively, the basic DIME information is contained in three documents which may be downloaded from these links:

  • The DIME Program Announcement contains all of the necessary information for submitting entries to the DIME high school team competition.
  • The WING Program Announcement contains all of the necessary information for submitting entries to the WING competition for teams in grades 6-9.
  • The DIME & WING Educators Resource Guide contains assistance for educators and team advisors for the topic of microgravity. The steps for developing an experiment and proposal are outlined with suggestions for producing a polished proposal.
  • The Experiment Design Requirements document contains the guidelines, requirements, and constraints for designing a DIME team's experiment apparatus to successfully operate in the 2.2 Second Drop Tower. (This will not be applicable to WING experiments.)

 

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Helpful Information

  • Additional information about the 2.2 Second Drop Tower at the NASA Glenn Research Center is available. A description of the drop tower in text and pictures is available there.
    (Bear in mind that some of the detailed information on the Drop Tower pages is not applicable to DIME teams.)

  • logo for YouTube video service
    A YouTube channel has been established for DIME and WING. That channel contains more videos that illustrate the drop tower and a few of the previous experiments constructed by DIME teams. If you have a YouTube account, subscribe to the DIME & WING page!
  • A Destination Tomorrow video taking you behind the scenes at the 2.2 Second Drop Tower. This is the drop tower where DIME experiments are operated.

    If necessary, turn on closed captioning.


  • Here is the NASA What is Microgravity? descriptive page. Linked from that page, there are related video clips, such as microgravity fluid physics and combustion science. Play the video here by clicking the start button.



 

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Possible support by your state's space grant consortium

The NASA-supported space grant consortium in your state may be able to support your team during your participation in DIME. A directory by state is maintained on the WWW of all the space consortia across the country. Eligibility for DIME is nationwide, so consult that list for the consortium in your state, DC, or Puerto Rico.

 

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Who has won the DIME competitions?

DIME participation in the past has been coast-to-coast.

2009/2010 - Next Year!
2007 to 2009 - DIME was on a hiatus.
2005/2006 - Teams from Tualatin, Oregon; Cincinnati, Ohio; Northbrook, Illinois; and Bay Village, Ohio.
2004/2005 - Teams from Tualatin, Oregon; Columbus, Georgia; Northbrook, Illinois; and Troy, Michigan.
2003/2004 - Teams from Miami, Florida; Akron, Ohio; Troy, Michigan; and Cincinnati, Ohio.
2002/2003 - Teams from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; Troy, Michigan; Cleveland Heights, Ohio; and Cincinnati, Ohio. (first nation-wide year)
2001/2002 - Teams from Bay Village, Columbus, and Cincinnati (two teams), Ohio.
2000/2001 - Teams from Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio. (DIME pilot year)

 

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Acknowledgements

The Dropping In a Microgravity Environment (DIME) program is a cooperative effort of many organizations.

  • Teaching From Space Program, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas
  • Educational Programs Office, NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio
  • ISS and Human Research Project Office, NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio
  • Space Processes and Experiments Division, NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio
  • National Center for Space Exploration Research, NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio
  • Office of Education, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC
  • Testing Division, NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio

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This page maintained by
Nancy R. Hall, NASA Glenn Research Center.
nancy.r.hall@nasa.gov
Last Updated June 26, 2009