Swiveling in space What you need: A swiveling or rotating chair that doesn't lean back easily and that turns smoothly. What to do: 1) Sit in the chair and spin around using your feet. Not very hard, right? You rotate the chair by using the resistance between your feet and the floor. 2) Now, push your back against the chair and lift up your feet. 3) Without touching anything, try to rotate the chair to either side. You're cheating if you use anything to push off! What Happened?: You probably ended up just moving a few inches to each side, but mostly staying in the same place. Because you can't push against anything, it's a lot harder to move. In space, astronauts floating in the shuttle cannot start or stop unless they push against something. Insidethe space shuttle, there are specially designed hand and foot handles to help the astronauts move around. Funding for SpaceLife ExPress provided by San Jose State University Foundation and NASA Space Life Sciences Outreach.

Over 80% of astronaut training time is spent practicing emergency procedures! What you need: Yourself and a doorway What you do: Stand in the doorway with your arms to your sides. Move your arms out to the side of the doorway so that the backs of your hands are pushing against the sides of the door frame. Push hard. Count slowly to 30. When you have reached 30, step out of the doorway and breath in. You should feel and see your arms float upwards for a short amount of time, even though you aren't trying to push out anymore! What happened?: Muscles work by contracting. For 30 seconds, you contracted the muscles that raised your arms. Your muscles were under tension, which means they were in use. When you stepped out of the doorframe, your muscles had adapted to pushing out. Pushing out became "normal," so your muscles continued to push out. Muscles adapt very quickly. Scientists are studying how the muscles of astronauts adapt to the low gravity of space. They want to know what kind of effects long space trips have on muscles and what happens when astronauts return to Earth or land on a planet or a moon.