A competition launched Monday allows students to submit science projects with a chance to have their ideas conducted in space. Sponsored by YouTube and computer company Lenovo, the YouTube Space Lab asks students to come up with a science experiment and upload a two-minute video explaining it to YouTube. The winning idea will be performed on the International Space Station and broadcast on the site.
The competition is open to high school students between the ages of 14 and 18. Entries, which must be biology or physics-related, have to include an experiment question, hypothesis, method for conducting the experiment, and description of the expected results. A panel of judges will select two winning entries from the videos uploaded. Stephen Hawking, along with several other notable scientists from NASA and other space agencies, will serve on that panel.
Google’s Head of Marketing Operations in Europe, Middle East, and Africa Zahaan Bharmal, came up with the idea for Space Lab. He said that it would “allow ordinary students the extraordinary opportunity of having their experiment carried out in space,” and that the channel would “serve as a home base on YouTube for creating, sharing, and discovering the best space and science-related videos in the world.”
This contest is part of a broader YouTube initiative to expand technology and innovation into the classroom. YouTube EDU was created to make the site a more effective tool for education, and the Space Lab channel aims to further that goal.
[via the Washington Post]
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