Back from the big teacher trip around Utah. 12 teachers participated, and we went to the Delta Coal-Fired Power plant, looked at oil and gas drilling sites, visited with bio-remediation specialists, talked to the Governor's Energy Advisor and a rep. from Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. We built stuff and made stuff and learned stuff and looked at stuff and figured stuff out. Then I came home and slept for approximately 48 straight hours, with occasional breaks to eat or go ride my horse. These trips need two leaders. I've done the experiment now, and am certain of it.
My gut (!) tells me that it was a very successful trip. All the teachers were engaged, and active in the process, asking good questions and getting involved. I overheard several conversations about how they would use this information in their classrooms, and how cool their students would find it that they got to stick their heads (almost) inside the 3,000 degree boiler at Delta.
Today, I am delighted to find myself back at work with my friends---going to lunch, and catching up on all I've missed. It's good to be back. But it means the end of this blog! Maybe I'll start another one somewhere else. I'll let you know. Maybe it will be 'professor grrrl'. ; )
Monday, August 10, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Science Unwrapped
So, up in Logan, they are doing something pretty fun. Once per month, on the last Friday, they have a public lecture by a 'local' scientist, followed by an activity for the public. They call it Science Unwrapped.
I was invited to give a talk about 'The Lives of the Stars'... no, not THOSE stars. ; ) The kind that fuse hydrogen into helium. Shane and I put our heads together, and came up with what I thought was a really fun activity. We modified the stellar evolution flowchart to be a little simpler (leaving out some of the intricacies about which element gets fused when), and then turned it into a scavenger hunt! They could walk around the quad, and fill in the flowchart as they followed the branch points to figure out the answers. Shane put the whole thing 'to scale' in time, so that people could really get a sense that stuff happens at the beginning and the end, but in the middle, there's just not much going on for a REALLY long time. He made up some spiffy posters and handouts---apparently, his copy center charges much less than ours. At the middle of the main sequence part of the lifetime, there was lemonade and cookies, which fits in with the current age of the Sun, and the fact that now, for this tiny smitch of time, lemonade and cookies exist in the Universe.
Anyway. A rousing success.
Today, I'm getting final details taken care of for this teacher thing next week. Hooray for Kinko's!
I was invited to give a talk about 'The Lives of the Stars'... no, not THOSE stars. ; ) The kind that fuse hydrogen into helium. Shane and I put our heads together, and came up with what I thought was a really fun activity. We modified the stellar evolution flowchart to be a little simpler (leaving out some of the intricacies about which element gets fused when), and then turned it into a scavenger hunt! They could walk around the quad, and fill in the flowchart as they followed the branch points to figure out the answers. Shane put the whole thing 'to scale' in time, so that people could really get a sense that stuff happens at the beginning and the end, but in the middle, there's just not much going on for a REALLY long time. He made up some spiffy posters and handouts---apparently, his copy center charges much less than ours. At the middle of the main sequence part of the lifetime, there was lemonade and cookies, which fits in with the current age of the Sun, and the fact that now, for this tiny smitch of time, lemonade and cookies exist in the Universe.
Anyway. A rousing success.
Today, I'm getting final details taken care of for this teacher thing next week. Hooray for Kinko's!
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