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The University of Wisconsin-Madison's ZeroG Team participates in NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program. In this program, students from across the nation design experiments to be performed in a microgravity environment. The student teams write and submit proposals to NASA, and selected teams are given the opportuntity to conduct their experiment on board NASA's C-9B Weightless Wonder (pictured, photo credit: NASA). This plane can achieve microgravity (zero-g) by flying a parabolic path, which is the path taken by a free falling object. When the plane goes over the top of the parabola, it is in a free-fall and passengers inside experience about 23 seconds of microgravity. The plane flies approximately 30 parabolas so students can run many trials of their experiment. This is the 10th consecutive year that a team from UW has participated in the program!

This year, the team is investigating the effectiveness of spray cooling in microgravity. Spray cooling is a method of thermal mamagement that is especially effective on high heat flux surfaces such as computer chips and laser diodes. Electronic components flown in space have the same cooling needs as on earth, but spray cooling has yet to be proven effective in a microgravity environment. We hypothesize that with our setup, we will demonstrate that spray cooling functions independent of gravity.

2006-2007 Experiment Information

Our team designed an experiment to research capillary action in microgravity. Our proposal was selected by NASA and team members traveled to Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas in March, to fly on the Weighless Wonder and perform the experiment.

One of the goals of our experiment was to determine the flow velocity of two different liquids traveling up varying contact angles. The liquids travel at different velocities over the different angles because the surface area of contact is different for each angle resulting in different magnitudes of capillary forces. We also hope to determine the volumetric flow rate. By testing two different liquids, water and a water-glycerin mix, we hope to determine a relationship between capillary action and fluid viscosity. The research is applicable to transporting fluids in space.