(Isabel E.)
On November 13th I was in my class when Mr. Lutomski, the
risk-manager for the International Space Station (ISS) walked in my
classroom! He was tall, had gray hair
cut short, a white shirt, with a green sweater, gray pants and brown
shoes. He showed us 3 videos on how the
body reacts after it’s been in space. He talked to us about a syndrome called “chicken
legs”, where all the blood from your legs goes up towards your head, since
there’s no gravity keeping the blood towards the feet. Then he told us to do an experiment (I was
the test subject). The test subject had
to roll up his or her pants, lie down on their back, and put their legs up for
10 minutes. Since our legs were up against a wall, gravity pulled the blood
down (to our heads). Then we had to compare the measurement of our legs before
and after, to see if our leg measurements changed. 
(The whole
class) Our measurements did change! The circumference of our legs got smaller (for
most people) because we got “chicken legs” when the blood left our legs.
(Mariam)
These are the steps that we did. First,
we had to stand up for 10 minutes so that most of the blood would go to our
feet. Second, we had to put tape on our legs, and the first piece we had to put
it a little higher than our knee. The
second piece we had to put below the knee. The third piece of tape we had to
put almost on the foot, but not exactly on the foot. The third step was that we
had to lie down and put our feet up for 10 minutes. It felt very good to do this because we did
it with a partner, so that they could measure us. It was also awesome because
we got to be with someone who works with the ISS!
(Andres) How
about you try this at your house? But you must not wear tight jeans or pants
that are not easy to pull up, so that the experiment works well (otherwise the
blood gets “caught” in your thigh, and the measurements might be wrong).
(Julia) I
love space! Maybe someday I will go to the Moon, and it will be just as common as
going to New York today!
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