Monaca pupils get taste treat of NASA popcorn experiment

Times Staff

It's an experience not many people have, but after spending Tuesday afternoon counting, weighing, sniffing and tasting tons of popcorn, the pupils now consider themselves to be popcorn experts extraordinaire.

The children took part in a Utah State University program called Get Away Special to see if they could determine which bags of microwaveable popcorn were taken to space and which ones remained on Earth.

Six of the unpopped bags spent about two weeks sealed in a canister on board the space shuttle last June.

The other bags were kept in a NASA laboratory.

With the assistance of mechanical engineer Rick Rambo of Utah State University, the third- through sixth-graders from all Monaca elementary schools popped each bag of popcorn and then conducted scientific experiments to see just what makes space popcorn different from popcorn on Earth.

"Oh, this is definitely space popcorn," Neiko McNeill, 9, said after opening a bag of hot, buttered popcorn. "This looks like dirt; it has be from space."

But Samantha Regney, 10, informed him that it wasn't dirt popcorn, it was just burnt. So that probably meant it wasn't from space, she said.

"It smells like regular popcorn, the kind I eat all the time," Regney said.

McNeill and Regney were in charge of counting the popcorn and unpopped kernels in each bag, while another group was in charge of sniffing each piece to see if the popcorn had a scent other than butter and salt.

Another group was in charge of weighing each piece, and, of course, a small group of students had the pleasure of tasting samples from each bag.

Brandon McDaniels, 11, disagreed with Regney and said he believes the biggest difference between space and Earth popcorn is that some of the space popcorn is burnt.

"It's burnt and kind of dry," McDaniels said as he munched on his afternoon snack. "It's burnt because of radiation in space; radiation burns things."

Rambo, a Monaca High School graduate who now works for USU, said the burnt popcorn was in fact from the packets flown to space. But that isn't the only difference between Earth and space popcorn.

Past experiments have found popcorn from space pops more efficiently, it's fluffier and, he said, some believe it tastes better.

The results weren't determined by scientists or college students, Rambo said. They were discovered by other elementary students across the nation who have conducted the same experiments.

Since students now know the differences between the two popcorns, they said they would like to know what causes the differences in the first place.

"That we're not exactly sure of," Rambo said. "It's probably that it doesn't get any oxygen while in the canister so it dries out."

Rambo said the results of Tuesday's experiments will be sent to NASA, where they will be reviewed.

Dianna Smith can be reached online at dsmith@calkinsnewspapers.com