Science Education Pedagogy Seminar

Rani: As our pedagogy seminar comes to a close, Jonathan and I want to take some time to thematically and ideologically wrap things up before we present our final project with one another. Personally, I approached this seminar with a fair amount of hesitation and largely an open mind – I had never participated in an academic enterprise to teaching, much less to a science course. For the most part, this seminar lived up to my expectations of scope and theme as well as trajectory, and as the semester progressed we’ve had several pit stops at pertinent topics: aids and experimentation and assessment, to name a couple.

In an exercise of reflection, we would like you to think about one or two or all of these questions.

1. Why did you decide to join this seminar?
2. What is one thing you’ve gotten out of this seminar?
3. What is one thing you wanted to discuss but didn’t find the time or space to?

Jonathan: First, I’d like to respond to Rani’s blog. Looking back over the course of the semester, I am so pleased with the way that our seminar has turned out. In all honesty, my expectations coming into this class were fairly low and uninformed. I wanted to join as I have an interest in education, but also as a way to better understand the material of our class. The true strength of this class however, in my opinion, is it’s size. More specifically, the comfortability that we feel with each other as a result of the small size of our class. I think the discussions that we have as a group reach a depth that would not be possible in a larger class. What do you all think about the size of our class?

Also, I would like to get a sense of how our class feels about our final projects. Do you think that having this broad of a project is a strong way to end the course? How would you change it if not?

Excited to hear what everyone has to say! We look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday.

Rani and Jonathan

Quantum entanglement is a central principle of quantum physics that says some particles, like photons or electrons, are linked together so that the state of one particle cannot be described independently of the other. Another central principle of quantum theory is that before a particle is measured, it doesn’t have a definite state but is rather in a superposition of all possible states. This is modeled by Schrodeinger’s Cat, where the cat is dead and alive before the box is checked.

You could think of it this way: if two electrons are (quantum-ly?) entangled and you smack electron A, which is on the far left side of the universe, some invisible force crosses the entire universe to wherever electron B is and electron B gets that exact same smack at the exact.same.time. Which means that this invisible force traveled way faster than the speed of light, which isn’t possible, I think..

This is such a puzzling idea that Einstein called it a “spooky action at a distance”. Scientists at the Delft Institute of Technology in The Netherlands proved that quantum entanglement actually does happen by doing some crazy stuff with electron beams and supercooled diamonds. They shot an electron into 2 of these diamonds which acted as mini prisons, and as they affected the spin rate of 1 electron, the spin rate of the other was also affected. If we are ever able to figure out how this actually works, could it lead to time travel or teleportation? Would we be able to send people somewhere in the Universe in an instant?

Here is a funnier explanation in layman terms from a non-scientific website: “if two electrons are created together, they are forever entangled, much like you and your high school sweetheart according to some [sorry] poems you wrote in tenth grade. And, also like you and your ex-love, regardless of the distance between the two electrons, a change in quantum spin in one electron will immediately cause the other electron to change spin as well. So like, when she [hooks up] with Bob Feeney, the teams QB after the first date, even though youre home alone playing Tetris, your heart will ache with a sudden and unmistakable pain. Thats the pain of entanglement, my friend.”

Recently in class we’ve been talking about the outer portion of our Solar System. Beyond Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt, the disc-shaped region that begins at about 30 AUs and ends around 55 AUs. The Kuiper Belt is home to hundreds of thousands of icy bodies, an estimated trillion or more comets, and Pluto, according to NASA (I never realized Pluto was actually part of the Kuiper Belt).

The idea of the Kuiper Belt was proposed in 1943 by Kenneth Edgeworth who suggested that there were comets and larger bodies beyond Pluto. In 195, Gerard Kuiper predeicted there was a belt of icy objects beyond Neptune. While Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, the first “original” Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) was discovered in 1992 by Dave Jewitt and Jane Luu after 5 years of searching the skies. Using the University of Hawaii’s 2.2 m telescope, they found 1992 QB1, which they wanted to name “Smiley”. In 2002, Quaoar, the first large KBO hundreds of km in diameter was found by scientists at the Palomar Observatory (Quaoar was actually photographed in 1980 but wasn’t noticed). Sedna was discovered in 2004 using the same 48-inch Oschin telescope used at the Palomar Observatory. In 2005, Eris was discovered and in 2008, 2005FY9 (aka “Easterbunny”) was recognized as a “dwarf planet” and renamed Makemake. Two months later Haumea, or 2003EL61 or “Santa”, was classified as a “dwarf planet”.

Rings. It’s what many senior girls are looking for right now, just as graduation approaches. Spring brings the rings, right? The giant planets, however, sport perhaps the most breathtaking rings of all.

What many won’t notice about rings of giant planets, such as Saturn, are its imperfections.

The darker regions of the rings do not necessarily mean that the rings are made out of darker substances, like the rings of Neptune, which are made out of extremely dark material. The regions in which Saturn’s rings appear dark are actually spaces that have less icy material and particles; that is, less sunlight is reflected in these regions because there is not a comparably large amount of the material present to do so.

Then, where did all that material go? And why does the darkness appear in such uniform, straight patterns?

The answer: shepherds. Yes, objects present in Saturn’s rings (as well as the rings of the other giant planets) actually herd these particles into straight lines around the planet. In order for this event to work, there must be two moons, or satellites, present. One, the outer moon, steals orbital energy from the particles present in the ring around it. This, in essence, “pushes” the particles closer toward the planet – allowing the particles to fall into lower orbits. At the same time, the other, inner moon gives these particles orbital energy. This projects them into the higher orbits, though these orbits are slower than the lower orbits. The push and pull from both moons creates “pressure” on both sides of a section of rings, herding the icy particles into a nice, straight strand.

 The image above shows the effects of the moons’ power in the form of ripples. Yet, we still get nice bands (or flocks, if you will) of icy particles, all thanks to these shepherds.

for years people have been advocating for countless alternative ways to generate energy to power our ever-industrializing world (hint: fossil fuels are unsustainable!!)

whereas nuclear fission generates massive amounts of electricity by splitting atoms apart but also generating radioactive waste, fusion is incredibly pristine and produces no waste byproducts! it is, after all, the process which powers our Sun, and the ability to harness that kind of power would mean an absolute reshaping and rethinking of how we power our lives on earth – and the potential that offers for humanity. earlier this year, a team in germany successfully produced and sustained hydrogen plasma for the first time on earth. it lasted only a quarter of a second, but it was enough to prove that it could be done on earth!

the possibilities for clean, limitless energy are endless. what would you want your world to be like where everyone had access to clean energy forever?

The classic childhood picture book turned game, Where’s Waldo? Surely most of us have seen this book in a waiting room at least once in our lives- and have attempted, successfully or not to find Waldo among the distracting background. Well, today astronomers are in a living version of the game, only they’re looking at many exoplanets in the search for life.

So what is an exoplanet? Well, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has a definition for a planet, but that only applies to objects within our solar system. And as far as exoplanets go, they only have a “working definition” that was last modified in 2003-not that it really matter because much like “planet” the definition is heavily debated. For the purposes of this blog post, I will be referring to planets that match the IAU definition for our solar system, but are orbiting stars that are not our Sun.

Back in October of 1995, the first exoplanet orbiting a main sequence star was found! That exoplanet being 51 Pegasi b which orbits the main sequence star 51 Pegasi in just 4 days, not only that, but it’s the size of Jupiter!

But really, the reason I chose this topic is because I wanted to share this really cool video I found on tumblr (cause I follow a lot of star stuff). It fits in really well with the topics we’ve been discussing in class! Enjoy!

Further Reading:

NASA Article on History of Discovery of Exoplanets

Wikipedia Article on Exoplanets

IAU- Naming of Exoplanets

on my flight back from amsterdam at the end of spring break, i finally had the opportunity and wherewithal to watch the theory of everything, the stephen hawking biopic from a couple of years ago. it got me thinking about a lot of things from my physics education in high school and more recently my pursuit of an undergraduate physics degree. i remembered in 10th grade my physics teacher talking about uniting all the forces in the universe in one “beautiful, elegant” equation which would provide a grand unifying framework for all of physics in the universe. pretty lofty stuff.

in the movie we learn (albeit very minimally) about hawking radiation, the theoretical model of which hawking developed in 1976. so what is it? essentially it is when the fluctuation in energy in the black hole engenders a particle-antiparticle pair of imaginary particles near the event horizon. one slips into the black hole before they have a chance to completely annihilate each other, so it appears to an observer that a particle was emitted from the black hole! the particle that gets absorbed then has a negative energy!

this is fascinating stuff – enough to warrant eddie redmayne’s best actor oscar!