08/29/2025
Betsy Taylor tells about Space Days, an annual event at the John and Annie Glenn Museum where students had fun and this year learned about electricity. Betsy assists with this project. Read more Rainy Day Writers stories on Your Radio Place and in Guernsey News.
Space Days by Betsy Taylor
On July 14 and 15, 2025, the John and Annie Glenn Museum in New Concord celebrated astronaut, John Glenn’s birthday with a Space Days event centered on electricity. The museum highlights Glenn’s birthday, July18, each year with a themed program connected to his career with NASA.
Historians often write about Glenn’s milestone space flights in 1962 and 1998. They emphasize the social and political effects, and the economic influence of his accomplishments. Scientists and engineers, on the other hand, concentrate on the technical aspects of the machinery that carried him and his fellow astronauts into orbit in both capsule and shuttle. From an engineering standpoint, a fundamental necessity for getting any craft into space is electricity.
The 2025 Space Days event brought students ages 9-12 to the museum to learn about the roles of electric circuits and the dangers of static electricity in spacecraft. During the morning session, students used colored holiday lights clipped from strands, alligator clips, and batteries to complete electric circuits. They experimented with batteries of different voltages as power sources and discovered that, unless wires were connected in proper sequence, electricity wouldn’t flow.
As a result of their efforts, students learned the differences between electric conductors and insulators. From those discoveries they were able to generate an understanding of safe electrical practices.
At noon, on each of the days, lunch was donated by Wally’s Pizza.
During the afternoon sessions, students experimented in creating static electricity using ordinary items. Wiffle ball bats, balloons, wool fabric, aluminum soda cans, Kool-Aid powder and paper shreds played an important role in discovering static electricity’s attractive and repulsive forces. We learned that static electricity can be very dangerous inside spacecraft.
As always, the afternoon ended with the explosive fun of water rocket launches. Two-liter soda bottles containing small amounts of water became missiles propelled to great heights by air from a bicycle pump.
To conclude the day, students were given a book from the Scholastic Publishing Company and sponsored by a donation from Park National Bank. The generosity of our sponsors is greatly appreciated.
