Intro Quiz: Case Study of Helen Sharman

Video: Case Study of Helen Sharman

﻿Hi everyone, I'm Miss Strmec. In today's science lesson, we're going to be doing a scientist case study about Helen Sharman, who is a British chemist, and the first British citizen to ever go into space. In this lesson, you will need a pen and a piece of paper. Feel free to pause the video here to go collect the equipment if you don't have it already. Now, take a moment to make sure that you're in a distraction-free environment and that your phone is on silent. When you're ready, let's begin. In today's lesson, we're going to start by learning a little bit more about Helen Sharman. Then we're going to have a look at her work as a chemist and link it to your learning of chemical reactions. Finally, we're going to have a look at her space exploration and learn a little bit more about the experiments that she did in outer space. Let's start by learning a little bit more about our scientist, Helen Sharman. Helen Sharman was born in Sheffield, England on May 30th in 1963. She is a British chemist and astronaut, who is the first British citizen to go into space. She participated in the mission to the Soviet modular space station Mir in May 1991. Before doing this, Sharman received her bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Sheffield in 1984. After receiving a doctorate from the Birkbeck College in London, she worked first as an engineer in London, and then as a chemist for the Mars Confectionery Limited Company, which are the chocolate makers of the well known chocolate bar Mars. In November 1989, she responded to a radio advertisement for astronauts and was selected from more than 13,000 applicants. She had the opportunity to be a part of Project Juno, a commercial British cosmonaut mission. She underwent 18 months of rigorous training at the Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre at Star City, near Moscow in Russia. Sharman finally launched into space in on May 18th, 1991. The mission lasted nearly eight days, and during this time, Sharman conducted medical and agricultural tests. She also communicated with British school children on the radio. Helen Sharman will go down in history as being the first British citizen to go into space and the first female astronaut to touch down on the Mir Space Station. Let's recap some of those key points. First, Helen Sharman graduated from University with a degree in chemistry. She was the first British astronaut to go into space. She was also the first woman to visit the Mir Space Station in 1991. On the right hand side of the screen, just below me, you can see a picture of Helen Sharman working in her office. Now let's do some quick recall questions to see what you've learned. Helen Sharman was the first blank citizen to go into space. Shout out your answer. Three, two, one, you should have said British. Helen Sharman was the first British citizen to go into space. Next question, in 1991, Helen Sharman became the first blank to go to the Mir Space Station. Shout out your answer. Three, two, one, you should have said the first woman. In 1991 Helen Sharman became the first woman to go to the Mir Space Station, excellent work. Now let's have a look at how her work in chemistry links to the chemical reactions that you've learned about in this unit. Helen Sharman first used her chemistry degree to acquire a job at General Electrics, which is a company that manufactures a wide range of electronics. Her job there was to discover a coating that could be applied to the outside of electronics to prevent them from scratching. She then went on to work at the Mars Confectionery Company. You should know this more commonly as the Mars Chocolate Bar Company. Here she worked as part of a team to develop Mars ice cream. The Mars company found that there was a drop in sales over the summer months. So they worked quickly to devise a ice cream product that would boost their sales during the summer months. Her job also included taste testing both the ice creams and the chocolates that were produced in the factory. She would taste test them to make sure that the pH balance was just right so that the chocolate didn't have a bitter or chalky taste. Sharman had also quoted in a few interviews that this was her absolute favourite part of the job. Let's do some quick recall questions to see which you can remember. Helen Sharman first worked for General Electrics developing blank for electronics. Three, two, one, you should have said developing screens, excellent work. Next question. Helen's favourite part of being a chemist at Mars Confectionery was the, three, two, one, the chocolate taste test, excellent job. Now let's have a look at how Helen Sharman's work with chocolate is linked to your understanding of the pH scale. Remember, I told you that she taste tested to see if the chocolate had a chalky taste. If it had a chalky taste, that would tell us that the chocolate was slightly too alkaline. And it would be important that the chocolate had a balanced pH so that you could avoid that undesired taste. I'd now like you to review your understanding of the pH scale. For each question popping up on the screen now, I'd like you to go ahead and circle neither acid or alkaline for each of the substances listed. Pause your screen here, complete the task and resume when you've finished it. Great work, let's have a look at the answers. For lemon juice, you should have put a circle around acid because this is an acidic substance and would fall below seven on the pH scale. Sour taste is also acidic and would be found below the seven on a pH scale. The chalky taste remember this is what we were trying to avoid in the chocolate at the Mars company. This is an alkaline substance so therefore it would be found above seven on the pH scale. Hand soap also alkaline, found above seven on the pH scale. For question five and six, I haven't given you a specific substance but I've told you where that substance is placed. A substance with a pH of five is an acid. And a substance with a pH of 12 is an alkaline. Excellent work, I'd now I'd like you to take a moment to mark and feedback your own answers. If you need to pause the screen here and resume once you finish. Now, let's have a look at Helen Sharman's experience on her space exploration. You might be thinking, how did Helen Sharman get offered the opportunity of a lifetime to be the first British citizen to go up to space? Well, funnily enough, Helen Sharman replied to an advert that read "No experience necessary." The advert was for Project Juno, the private British space programme that was going to select the country's first ever astronaut, who would join three Russian astronauts on the Mir Space Station for eight days. The advert was looking for people who were qualified in something like science, engineering or medicine. It needed to be somebody who did a practical job with their hands, because the ultimate astronaut was going to be asked to do experiments while in space. As part of her training, Helen had to learn to speak Russian so that she could move to Moscow and complete her 18 months of training in Star City. When her training was finally completed in 1991, she boarded the Soyuz TM-12 Mission to the Mir Space Station with three other Soviet cosmonauts. They experienced unbelievable acceleration upon launch, and in less than nine minutes, they were 400 kilometres away from the Earth's surface. A spaceship orbited the planet for two days before manually locking to the Mir Space Station. Let's recap some of those key points. Remember, Helen Sharman was asked to learn Russian so that she could move to Moscow for her certification and training programmes. It took her 18 months to be fully trained. And at this point in her training, there were still two candidates in the running to be the person to go on that spaceship. When she was finally selected for the mission, they boarded their spaceship, which was the Soyuz TM-12 and it was on its way straight to the Mir Space Station. In the image below me you can see a similar spaceship. And finally, I explained the difference between cosmonauts and astronauts. They're basically the same thing except to get the name cosmonaut you would have needed to trained and certified by the Russian Space Agency. Once in space, Helen Sharman wasted no time to begin working on the experiments that she was there to do. Her focus was on agricultural experiments, and she examined how radiation, atmosphere and weightlessness affect the growth of plants. By weightlessness, we're referring to the lack of gravity that occurs when you go into space. Her bags were packed full with plant resources that she could use to grow potatoes, wheat and lemons. In her research findings, she explained that every cell in the tip of a root has very small, very dense crystals. And because of these crystals, a plant is able to grow their roots under the influence of gravity and towards the centre of the earth. Without gravity, these little crystals are floating around the inside of the cells in the roots tips, and they're touching the cell walls, and the plant really doesn't know which way it's supposed to grow. In her experiment with the potato root, the roots ended up growing in all directions. Because of Helen Sharman's findings, chemists have now been able to go into space and grow plants, but they do it in a slightly different way. When they take a potato plants into space, they use these special tubes that help to streamline the direction that the roots need to grow. Other studies that Dr. Sharman conducted, concluded that space does not have convection currents and therefore cannot maintain a constant concentration of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Many more of these experiments are needed to really understand what's going on in space, and to be able to build up the data that's needed to form concrete conclusions. The more data that we can collect, and the more conclusions that we can form, the better chance we'll have any future attempts to create human settlements on other planets. Let's recap some of the key points from her experiments in space. Remember, Dr. Sharman went up there to do agricultural experiments or to try to grow plants and crops. She investigated how radiation, atmosphere and weightlessness affect the growth of plants. She concluded that fruiting plants would not be able to grow in space as they require pollinators, and there are no bees in space. In the image below me here you can see a sample of how they would grow a plant in space. Notice the lack of gravity in the sense that the plant is just floating around the spaceship. And you might also notice that the plants are contained in a Ziploc bag in order to control their environment. I'd now like you to complete some independent practise. I'd like you to use the words from the word bank below in order to complete the sentences on screen. Feel free to pause your video here, complete the task and resume when you're finished. Great work, let's have a look at the answers. Your answer should read, Helen Sharman was selected to go to Russia to train to be cosmonaut. On her exploration, she conducted experiments while in space, investigating plant growth. She wanted to see how the growth of a seed would be affected by the change in radiation, atmosphere, and weightlessness. Pause your screen here to mark and feed back your own answers. You have now made it to the end of the video portion of this lesson. You should now have a better understanding of Helen Sharman and her career both as a chemist and a cosmonaut. Remember that when she was working at the Mars factory as a chemist, she had to have a good understanding of the pH scale in order to make sure that the chocolate that was produced was tasty and delicious. You should also understand that her work as a cosmonaut took her into space with the Russian Space Agency. She got the opportunity to do experiments without gravity to see how plants could grow. Excellent work this lesson. Don't forget to hit next to complete the end of lesson quiz.

Worksheet: Case Study of Helen Sharman

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This lesson looks at the life and work of the inspirational chemist, Helen Sharman, who went from a being a chemist for the Mars chocolate company to the first Briton in space!

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Case Study of Helen Sharman

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