Bemiss Gets Well-Traveled Visitor Students Asks First Black Female Astronaut Down-To-Earth Questions

Dr. Mae C. Jemison - the first African American woman to go into space - stood before a group of sixth-graders at Bemiss Elementary School and answered questions Thursday.

No one asked her how it felt to travel around the Earth at a speed of up to 25,000 mph.

And no one asked her if she faced tremendous pressure as a black woman in a field dominated by white men.

The students just wanted to know the basics.

“How do you shower in space?” one student asked.

“How do you know where to land?” another asked.

Jemison, who traveled aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor in 1992, explained that the shuttle has an elaborate on-board computer system to guide the astronauts from orbit back to the dry, lake-bed runways of Edwards Air Force Base in California.

And showers?

“You can’t take a shower on the space shuttle,” Jemison said. “The water will fly everywhere. We had to take towel baths to wipe the sweat off of us.”

Jemison, who lives in Houston, was a NASA astronaut for six years before starting her own science business. She appeared on an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and four years ago was selected as one of the World’s 50 Most Beautiful People by People magazine.

Jemison got her bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from Stanford University and her doctorate from Cornell University.

Though the sixth-graders at Bemiss might not have completely understood the significance of Jemison’s accomplishments, she believes it’s important for her to speak to children - particularly young girls and students of color.

“Hopefully they’ll look and say, ‘She’s just like me, I can do that, too,”’ Jemison said.

After lobbing questions, the students got a chance to perform a little science of their own.

They sloshed their hands through pans of water and pulp and tried to make paper. What most of them got was gooey resin that looked like it had oozed its way from bad cookie dough.

“Ick,” student Carly Demers said. “This stuff feels gross.”

Demers was one of 50 sixth-graders who got a science lesson from Spokane District 81 high school students Eli Penberthy, Klara Bowman, Erin Richardson and Lindsay Watts. The four girls recently won a $25,000 Bayer/National Science Foundation Community Innovation Award for researching grass burning.

Jemison, 41, is a scientist and physician who serves as the Bayer Corporation’s national science literacy advocate. She travels around the country speaking to teachers and students about the importance of science literacy.

Jemison said projects such as trying to make paper from pulp stimulate students’ thinking.

“It’s important to have them do science the way science is done in the laboratory,” she said. “Too many times, science is made into memorizing facts.”

That’s not studying science, she said.

“Science literacy isn’t knowing all these big names either,” Jemison added. “It’s problem solving. It’s learning to use skills that you are going to need for the rest of your life, regardless of what you do for a living.

“There’s even a science to figuring out how to live with one another,” she said.

Though few students could figure out how to turn the pulp into paper, they gave it their best shot.

They poured the pulp into a pan of water, used thin meshed wire to sift the pulp from the pan, sponged off the pulp and let it dry between two paper towels. It was then ironed, and if it was done properly, the towels were peeled back to reveal paper.

Student Fred Miller uncovered his pulp and found a mess.

“It looks like an ugly pancake, but it feels like slime,” Miller said.

Demers said she had fun doing the experiments, but added, “Now I’m going to look at oatmeal in a whole different way.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo