WEBVTT FILE

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Hi. I'm Michelle Handleman, I'm at the Visitors Center here at NASA's Goddard

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Space Flight Center and inside we have a big science fair happening

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that's part of the GLOBE program. Let's go inside and meet some of the

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participants. [music]

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So the GLOBE program has been around for a very long time and students have these

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protocols that are standardized across the whole world. But there's been

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I think a missing element. This opportunity to showcase their work

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in a competitive environment through like a science fair competition. And so that's what we're holding here today.

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The first in a series of regional science fair competitions funded by the

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National Science Foundation and organized in collaboration with the GLOBE program

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office. All right well your project was finding out if animals are safer

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under the snow. Tell me about that? Usually we have a lot more

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snow than we did this year. So we wanted to see how the little animals

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survive during the cold winters. And we knew that

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snow insolated because we were reading articles that our teacher gave us. We tested

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dissolved oxygen and PH and we found out that

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e coli levels are really unsafe for our community. Before this I didn't

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really know how bad the water actually was. The e coli is an absurd amount

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it's well over the safe drinking and swimming level and we still have kids

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playing in it and animals drinking from it. What's it like knowing

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that NASA scientists are interested in this kind of work? I think it's

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so cool. I've never really met a NASA scientist before

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I haven't really met that many scientists ever actually and it's really cool just to experience this. It's

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very exciting knowing that people that are very high in science

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that do a lot of science for their job, their work are actually

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interested in three kids from Deerfield. Has working on this

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GLOBE project inspired you to study science

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engineering, math in college? Yeah it's definitely opened my eyes

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to different, like to broader terms of science. Like science doesn't have to just

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be like, there's not just form of science. There's so many different horizons to it.

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I've always wanted to do math and I've loved it. But just being here I've found

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that there are jobs for mathematicians at NASA

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you don't just have to major in science to be here. Why was this project

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important to you personally? After starting to do the project

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after realizing what an impact we make on the water, I realized that

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I actually needed to take a stand to make the water safer.

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For me I own five horses and so all of this manure and all of this

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continuous nasty is running into our water. All the work these students are doing

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are feeding into a database that's accessed by NASA scientists

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and other scientists around the world. We can't predict what kind of jobs these students will be

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competing for. So we have to prepare them as best we can to compete

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in an environment that is a big mystery. And so making sure they have

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the best skillsets to earn the best paying jobs and also to

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support you know our economy as it moves forward is really important to me

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and also to the agency. [music]