BANGOR – Strapped into a spinning chair, unable to see or hear, Andrew Sarto on Tuesday could have been the subject of a weird experiment.

Instead, the sixth-grade teacher from Morse Memorial School in Brooks was at the Challenger Learning Center demonstrating the Barany chair – a device used by NASA to train astronauts to rely on their flight instruments rather than their own sensory perceptions, which can be fooled.

The chair will be a permanent feature at the Bangor center that offers middle school pupils the opportunity to learn about the science of space travel as they take on the roles of astronauts, engineers and navigators.

One of several area teachers who attended Tuesday’s session to get new ideas for their science classes, Sarto volunteered to show how humans can be tricked by their “vestibular sense” which helps them maintain their sense of balance.

After blindfolding Sarto and plugging his ears so he couldn’t see or hear, instructor Gary Coulter spun him around in the chair which was created from a piece of office furniture equipped with low friction bearings to allow it turn rapidly.

Following Coulter’s instructions and forced to rely only on his vestibular sense, Sarto used his thumbs to indicate whether he believed he was moving to the right or the left. Holding them straight up meant he thought he had stopped moving entirely.

He was wrong two out of three times. Once, he thought he had stopped moving when, in reality, he was still spinning to the right. A second time, he believed he was rotating to the left when he had actually stopped.

Coulter, president and chief executive officer of the Challenger Learning Center of Colorado in Colorado Springs, said the results were typical.

The vestibular sense provides inaccurate information with respect to the body’s motion, he said.

Flight instruments were designed by engineers to operate in an aviation environment, Coulter pointed out. The semi-circular canals that are located in the inner ear and that are part of the vestibular system were not designed for flight, he said. “So if you want to stay alive, trust your instruments.”

The chair will be a powerful learning tool, Coulter said. “It’s sometimes difficult for science teachers to communicate to students that the laws of chemistry and physics pertain to the human body.”

Teachers were amazed by the exhibition. “I had an overwhelming sense that I was beginning to spin in the opposite direction,” Sarto said.

Later, using PVC pipe, fishing bobbers, a vacuum jar and water, teachers constructed models that demonstrate how the semicircular canals of the vestibular system function. They each took a model to use in their classroom.

Linda Davis, who teaches at the Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast, said she’d use the model both for her science class and for the space club that she runs.

Paula Leavitt, science teacher at the James F. Doughty School in Bangor, said she incorporates space curriculum with the study of the human body, so “this will be a wonderful tie-in.”

The chair and Tuesday’s teacher training event were paid for with a grant from the National Space Biomedical Research Institute at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Similar workshops will be offered to all Maine teachers this fall. For more information, check the center’s Web site at www.clcofme.org.

Challenger Learning Center Flight Director Robin Kennedy said Tuesday the new exhibit will “really enhance the excitement and the realistic nature” of the facility.

“It will help kids understand how we study the human body and its functions in space. We think kids are going to love it – besides the fact they get to spin around.”