PiBaL 2017 Was A Huge Success
By Pizitz Middle School Sixth Grader Bella Gentry
Pizitz students successfully launched their weather balloon, PiBal on May 10th! After launching it, three retrieval teams went to track down the balloon.
The balloon ended up landing in South Georgia around Americus and Plains. They found the balloon on the farm of two former science teachers who are now peanut farmers. They started to search in the back woods of the farm, and thankfully, a student wandered from the group a bit and spotted it. They were able to pull the balloon out of the tree and not have to use any equipment.The students and teachers were surprised about how far the balloon went, seeing as it traveled between about 3 ½ – 4 hours away from Birmingham. The balloon reached 27,905 m or 17.34 miles into the the stratosphere and got an awesome view of our atmosphere, the thin blue veil, and the sun.
The temperature probe recorded -62.3°C or -80.1°F. The air pressure at burst was only 9 millibars which means our balloon experienced 1% of normal air pressure (99% of all the air was below it)!
The balloon was in the air for 5 hours and 17 minutes.
Everyone at Pizitz Middle School is so happy with the launch of PiBal!
– Bella Gentry