Dr. Corey currently teaches AP Chemistry, Astronomy, Meteorology and Geology. For many years he has also been involved in developing controlled ecological life support systems, mostly through research supported by NASA (The National Aeronautics and Space Administration). As Dr. Corey put it, “The biomedical group at Kennedy Space Center back in the 80's started a project where they wanted to grow crops for extra‑terrestrial applications. So suppose you were going to setup a Lunar base, or a Martian base or even a space station; what could you do to have a totally bio-regenerative system where plants would be used for food, fresh water, oxygen for the people, basically a self-contained system? The CO2 given off by the people would be used in photosynthesis by the plants converted into food, and the Oxygen generated by the plants in photosynthesis is used by the respiration for the people.” This work is key to any long-lasting, sustainable life in habitats where there are not currently any people like colonies deep in the ocean, in space stations or on other planets.
The concept of exploration, particularly space exploration, has always drawn Dr Corey. “As a civilization, hopefully, we're going to last tens of thousands of years more, and certainly… we're going to move out. We're going to move out off the planet. We're destined to that because it’s there for one. It’s just basic to our nature that we want to explore and discover.”
And does his work with these environments and growing plants come back to his students in the classroom? “Yes. In fact, what's surprising is it did today!” I'm having my AP Chemistry kids use a chamber, I'm having them measure photosynthesis and respiration rates of plants in this chamber. Basically, what they're doing is setting up sensors like carbon dioxide and temperature sensors and a little fan to mix the atmosphere to measure the rates. It goes right along with the unit on kinetics. Kinetics studies the rates of chemical reactions. So I'm using this as an adjunct, like a lab. But it's a big lab, because it's ongoing. We'll be doing a little bit now, a little bit next week. It might go, maybe a month or two that they'll be doing these studies and they'll write a big lab report. It will be a long paper with a lot of data and a lot of literature review introducing it.”
“So yes, it's being incorporated into the classroom…and it’s important because in most high school science, the students do experiments. We use lab manuals. When we want to teach a certain concept, there's a particular lab that goes with it…that's not research though. That's something that has been done and the kids do the labs to verify principles and concepts. Real research would be to ask a question and then develop a hypothesis based on that question. Then test the hypothesis with an experiment. Then once you've got the experimental results you, see if it confirms or denies and you go through the whole scientific method. Now, students can’t gain an appreciation for that from just doing labs that are standard – that requires research. So something like this chamber enables them to see the process and get engaged with the unknown. Because that's what research is, trying to figure something out that's not known. I think it's necessary at this stage, I get exceptionally bright AP Chemistry students ‑ they're whizzes. I want to challenge them and I want to give them an appreciation for research, for science. When they get into college, a lot of these kids are going to be miles ahead of their peers because they've done research.”
It is not just Chemistry classes that benefit from Dr Corey’s additional academic interests. His teaching of astronomy has changed a lot because of what he has done in his study of the stars. Astronomy classes venture out in the night with large tube telescopes, Dr Corey’s class took that a step further. “Well, I had the students make a telescope, a pretty big one. It's a project to have an appreciation for the optics, and then to go out into the field. We went to South Fields and used it, and we had super results. It came together really well. The kids were amazed. Their reaction was like, "Wow, you can see another galaxy." That’s some lesson.
