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The first YouTube Space Lab contest has announced its winners. Young people entered by creating a short video of their idea for an experiment to be done in space. I was a judge.
One of the two winners, eighteen-year-old Amr Mohamed of Egypt told me about his idea to have jumping spiders hunt their prey in orbit:
“So I was reading an article about animals that have been in space, and there was the orb weavers. I thought that not all the spiders hunt the same way. Thus came the idea to send jumping spiders—they can adjust their trajectory here on earth to compensate for gravity. Well, they can realize that they don’t have to compensate for gravity anymore.”
Amr got his idea and made his video in just one day. His experiment will actually be done on the International Space Station.
AM: “And it’s going to be the first time in history for an animal to change its way of hunting to zero-gravity environments.”
MD: “While I was judging I saw it and I really enjoyed the idea.”
AM: “Thank you very much.”
—Mariette DiChristina
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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2 Comments
Add CommentReminds me of Space Lab years ago when a group of children had their experiment selected to go into space to see how spiders would spin their webs a zero effective gravity orbit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would be really interesting to see these jumping spider performing their skill in space with no gravity. On earth these spiders can jump up to 35 cm. Those who want to know more about these spiders, they should visit www.jumpingspider.net
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