Light & Color

How hot, how fast, and how old

Students will explore the visible spectrum and its role in human vision. By sensing light through three sets of cone cells, each tuned to a different spectral sensitivity, we see color. The most common causes of color blindness will be demonstrated as a loss of function for one of these three color-sensing cones. Students will see the world as other animals (including snakes and honey bees) see it—in infrared or ultraviolet.

Students will learn that visible light is only a narrow portion of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, the role the Earth's atmosphere plays in protecting us from harmful radiation, and its effect on astronomical observatories. (Hint: to view the universe, sometimes you have to go into space!)

Light can tell you how hot an object is, how fast it is moving, and even what it is made of. Students will explore the relationship between color and temperature of radiating objects, from metals to stars. They will also explore emission lines, Doppler shift, and their role in telling us what an object is made of, how fast it is moving, and by extrapolation, how far away and how old it is.

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The Solar System & the problem of scale

How big? How far? How old?

How big are the planets? How big is the sun? How far are the planets from the sun? How big is the solar system? This program will explore the relative size of the Sun to the planets, and their distances from each other, by shrinking the solar system to a scale with which students are more familiar: namely the balls on the playground and the size of their school campus.

Two amazing facts, not easily appreciated in nearly every depiction of the sun and planets in textbooks, is how huge the distances are between the inner and outer planets, and how much larger the sun is compared to the planets.

The problem is one of scale. To fit the nine planets on the same page, there is no room to show the Sun. If the orbits of the planets are shown, the planets will be too tiny to see. Most books compromise by collapsing the enormous distances and disparities in size so that they all fit conveniently onto one page, but this is a misleading visual. The challenge is to give students a sense of the sizes and distances involved.

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Space Exploration Failures

Engineering and 3 human errors

Students will examine three high-profile failures in space exploration: the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope with a flawed mirror, the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter, and the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle.

They will play the roles of NASA managers, private contractor managers, and their engineers, and use data available at the time of launch, to argue whether the mission should proceed or be delayed. They will learn the importance of independent verification, the importance of using proper units in measurement, and the dangers of extrapolating beyond the set of measured data.

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Volcanoes & Magnets

Why we need both to survive

Volcanoes are commonly thought to be far away or long ago, but neither is true! We are surrounded by them. What does this have to do with magnets? Everything!

Students will use data from the U.S. Geological Survey to plot volcanoes nearby: there are 169 active volcanoes in the U.S. and its territories. They will explore the process of convection on Earth, within the Earth, and in the Sun. They will see how these similar processes are responsible for such diverse phenomena as weather, ocean currents, solar wind, and magnetic fields.

They will discover how animals have adapted to the Earth's magnetic field, and how this magnetic field has a profound effect on terrestrial life: without it, life as we know it would not exist on the Earth's surface.

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Bomber Gap

Extrapolation driven by fear

At the end of World War II, the United States had very little reliable information about Soviet military capabilities. What the U.S. did learn often came as an unpleasant surprise.

Fears that the Soviets had developed a long-range jet bomber capable of delivering atomic bombs to the United States became palpably real when the Soviets flew formations of a new jet bomber during a military air show in 1955. Observers counted 28 planes flying overhead.

In 1956, an American spy plane returned with pictures from Engels Air Force Base that showed a fleet of the latest Soviet jet bombers parked by the runway.

How many jet bombers did the Soviets have? Were the Americans falling behind in the arms race?

Students will analyze the U2 photographs taken over Engels to measure how many bombers were present. They work with a list of known air bases to estimate the total number of jet bombers in the Soviet Air Force.

These estimates will be compared with the estimates made by the CIA and other analysts at the time. Later, the Americans discovered the actual number of Soviet jet bombers was wildly different from what they had thought. What caused the estimates to be so far off? What were the consequences?

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Crater Maker

How craters can be used as a clock

Students will explore the following paradox: we see craters on the Moon, Mars, and Mercury, but it is very hard to find craters on Earth. Why does Earth lack impact craters?

They will work in teams to examine surface maps of Earth and one other planetary body: Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, and the moons Io, Ganymede, Europa, and Titan. They will have data on size, temperature, atmosphere, volcanic activity, weather and oceans.

They will discover that crater size and distribution is a very useful way of determining the age of a planetary surface, and that the lack of craters indicates a very young surface, with weathering playing a large role in erasing impact craters, but also volcanism.

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