Science teacher Amy Hammett has made every effort to educate her students about the planet we live on. Her efforts were made well-known when two of Hammett’s biology students, on behalf of all of her students, created a video saying thank you to ISS CASIS lab for allowing them the chance to grow tomato seeds. 

Last year, all of Hammett’s Honors Biology classes received seeds from International Space Station(ISS) CASIS lab for an experiment called Tomatosphere. The students set the levels of moisture as they would on Earth and observed. As the plants sat in the soil, Hammett’s biology students watched to see if they could maintain homeostasis.

At the end of the semester, two of Hammett’s biology students, on behalf of all of her students, created a video saying thank you for letting them experiment with these seeds. Hammett then sent it into ISS CASIS lab.

That summer, ISS published their thank you video on their social media site, and made the project a presentation at two national science conferences.

“It just went viral on social media,” Hammett said. “Because they want classrooms doing science of today.”

As an appreciation gift, they gave Maize High an ISS Above, a TV that has a direct connection with the ISS. It has four cameras attached to the satellite, which gives us four different views of Earth. This broadcast switches from each of the four cameras to give us a variety of views of Earth. When the Astronauts are being switched out, the ISS Above also will show a video of them, communicating with students.

Not only did Hammett get Maize High an ISS Above, she also found a new way for students to explore galaxies not anywhere near Earth, binary star systems, black holes, exosolar planets (planets that orbit stars outside of our solar system, some are similar to Earth, some are not), and constellations.

Dr. Paul Adams, who works at the Science and Mathematics Education Institute at Fort Hays State University allows Maize High to borrow the digital planetarium at no cost. This is a 50 thousand dollar blow-up planetarium.

“Mankind is planning to colonize Mars,” Hammett said. “We have a lot of biology to figure out in order to do that.”