When the original Can-Do payload was postponed by the Challenger disaster,
teachers looked for other ways to keep their students interested and involved in the
Can-Do program. Keeping students and teachers excited and actively involved in hands-on
science was the primary focus. The Can-Do team worked with scientists and technicians at
MUSC to develop a program to do all of that. The passive experiment program involved
formulating experimental questions, developing hypotheses, performing the experiments
under a set of experimental conditions, gathering the data, and forming conclusions. The
only element that was missing was the vial that would fly on the shuttle. The goal was to
show students that they were "real scientists" doing "real science" in
their classrooms. Passives were performed many times in the years that it took to finally
secure another payload assignment.
