_{Before showing a video to the 11th and 12th graders in his physics class, Glenn Coutoure, a teacher at Norwalk High School (Connecticut), warned them that his mouth would be hanging open, in childlike wonderment, almost the whole time. Coutoure then started the DVD, showing him and other science teachers floating in an airplane during a flight. By flying up and down like a giant roller coaster along parabolic paths, the plane simulated the reduced gravity of the Moon and Mars and then weightlessness in 30-second chunks.
 
The teachers performed a series of experiments and playful stunts, like doing pushups with others sitting on their backs and catching in their mouths M & M’s that flew in straight lines, that they hoped would help them better explain to their students the laws of motion that Isaac Newton deduced centuries ago.}

_{“You see the ball just hangs there,” Coutoure said.}

_{“That’s hot,” a student interjected.}

_{The Northrop Grumman Foundation has sent science teachers on these flights of weightlessness in the last four years to excite teachers and students about science and mathematics. “All of a sudden, this teacher becomes a superhero,” said Sandra Evers-Manly, the foundation’s president. When the foundation polled the teachers who flew nearly 92% reported an increase in overall interest in science among their students. About 75% said more students expressed a desire to continue studying math and science.}

_{Geoffrey Bergen of Whisconier Middle School in Brookfield, Connecticut, a teacher on the flight, said traditional teaching methods struggled to hold students’ interest in the age of videogames and fast-paced technology. “It’s really hard to teach out of a textbook when you consider the world we live in,” Bergen said. The zero-gravity flight, he said, “gives you a new tool for Newton’s laws.” Seeing their teachers performing astronaut like feats, the students, he added, “certainly are engaged.”}
 

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