White House Astronomy Night - Tulsa Regional STEM Alliance

White House Astronomy Night: A Celebration of Science, Technology, and Space

Through a partnership with US2020, the Tulsa Regional STEM Alliance was able to extend one invitation to a Tulsa area student to attend the 2015 White House Astronomy Night! Held on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC on October 19^th, students will stargaze with scientists, engineers, and visionaries from astronomy and the space industry.

We are happy to announce Andrew Hoke will be attending and representing Tulsa. Andrew is a 15 year old sophomore at Union High School. His most recent project was ‘Cubes in Space’, involving collaboration and consultation with NASA. This project included designing and constructing two separate team experiments that were sent into space. Each experiment tested the effects of anti-gravity on specific control items. The first experiment observed the chemical structures of common pain killers once returned from zero gravity. This experiment concluded that liquid pain killers presumably evaporate in the atmosphere since they vanished and the solid medicine remained chemically identical to how it was before being launched. The second test documented the effects of zero gravity conditions on a small ecosystem. The experiment verified no changes from earth to zero gravity conditions on seed growth and decomposition of organic waste. Andrew has continued to develop an active role in the astronomy community by participating in a recent communication event with the ISS and the Russian Cosmonaut aboard. Andrew hopes to pursue a career in Astronomy or Aerospace Engineering.

US2020 is a new organization developed from a White House call to generate large-scale, innovative solutions to our science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education challenges. Announced by President Obama at the 2013 White House Science Fair, US2020’s mission is to dramatically scale the number of STEM professionals mentoring and teaching students through hands-on projects with a focus on serving underrepresented communities — girls, underrepresented minorities, and low-income children. Their goal is to match 1 million STEM mentors with students from kindergarten through college via youth-serving nonprofits by the year 2020, creating millions of moments of discovery — life changing events when students conduct experiments, build model rockets, and program robots.