Having a GLAST (Fermi) with the Internet
Dr. Mary Garrett,
Educator/Ambassador for NASA's GLAST Program
Introduction:
As modern children passively stagnate in the world of television where the
unexpected is normal, it is sometimes difficult for educators to help children
truly understand the wonder of the real world and the excitement of exploring
it. At
http://universe.gsfc.nasa.gov/
we can get a look at the way scientists are striving to understand our world.
But the terms and especially the numbers used by the scientists make it
difficult for the students to really understand what the scientists are
discussing. Trying to help children and the non-scientists of our culture to
understand the excitement behind the blasting rockets and the reason for the
many NASA missions, NASA scientists have worked with educators to develop
educational resources that can capture the imaginations and expand the
understanding of students. You can find many NASA educational resources at
http://teachspacescience.org,
but sometimes it is hard to see how they can be used in the classroom. In this
presentation, we will look at NASA developed materials and methods to teach
small numbers and toxicity, large numbers and scale, the SWIFT mission
resources, understanding Newton's laws, number lines, adding rules, multiplying
rules, log rules, slide rules and log graphing paper. Then we take a brief look
a Human Space Exploration class and an astronomy class that use NASA materials.
What is Glast?
GLAST: Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope
- Planned for launch in 2007
- GLAST has two instruments:
- Large Area Telescope (LAT)
- GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM)
- GLAST will look at many different objects within the energy range of 10keV
to 300GeV.
Look at a drop of green food coloring. What hue is it? Put 9 drops of water in
10 different containers. Add a drop of green food coloring to the first
container. How many drops are in the container? What fractional part is food
coloring? What is the hue of the mixture? Add a drop of that mixture to the next
container. How many drops are now in this container? What fractional part of
this container is food coloring? What is the hue? Repeat the exercise from one
container to the next until all the containers have been used. At what point did
the green coloring seem to no longer be in the mixture?
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/mcl.html#mcls
is the URL of the EPA Drinking Water Standards. These numbers will
have more meaning to the students who have looked at food coloring and its
dispersion in water. Look at the small side of the scale the universe
booklet. Do these scales mean more after the water experiment?
Large Numbers and Scale
Having looked at small numbers, look from small to large. Look at a grain of
salt and note how it compares to a cubic millimeter. Look at a cubic centimeter,
decimeter, and meter. How big is a billion cubic millimeters? Think about the
size of a thousand thousand millimeters? What is this measure called (kilo).
Think of square of that size on each side? What is that called? Think of a
thousand, thousand millimeters cubed? How many grains of salt would fit in that
cube? How big is the Universe? How would we measure something that big?
Look at the large side of the scale the universe booklet:
Can you see how
first hand experiments with small and large numbers with concrete objects the
students are familiar with followed by doing the book of scale can give
them a more intuitive understanding of small and large numbers? To show your students the scales of the universe, look at the Powers of ten,
animated in java, at:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html,
By the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, The Florida State University,
Tallahassee. Orders of magnitude and powers of 10 are critical parts of
mathematics and science education. Help your students become more grounded
with sizes of numbers with hands on activities. This is a presentation
made by students of one of the NASA EPO Educator/Ambassadors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQSGnWuHzdk.
The metric system is based on powers of 10. The Swift mission resources,
http://swift.sonoma.edu/education/index.html,
can help you make the learning of powers interesting. While there, look at the
materials for Newton's Laws. Look at an example of a Newton's Law demonstrated
with a tennis ball and a person walking. Notice that each poster has numerous
activities on the back. There are other materials explaining the NASA missions
at http://universe.sonoma.edu/materials/index.html.
Here is a list of sites that students can use to find more information about GLAST:
Ordering, Distance, and Log Graphing Paper
From this trip into outer space, we will come back down to earth with a
closer look at
- a number line with whole numbers and look at this simple way to show
numbers and their sizes.
- Look at negative numbers. Where do they go? What do they mean?
- Look at powers of 10 on the number line. What happens to negative
exponents on a number line?
- From that we will ordering distance (page 33 of the Scale the Universe
Activity book.
- Having looked at scales, try out your understanding of size with common
items and their relationship to each other and scales of 10 of the metric
system with the width of a light switch lever to the Milky Way galaxy:
Question of scale and
Question of scale answers.
- Scaling the Universe starts on page 39 of the Scale the Universe Activity
book.
- Look at the book of scale and how it uses orders of magnitude. Does
this give you a "feel" for large and small numbers?
Having seen how powers of 10 work, look at a log tape. How does it work? If you go through the sequence of steps with students, there is a good
chance that your students will understand the log graphics and some of the tools
we use to try to grasp large numbers.
What will you do in your classroom
- Think over the many activities we have used today. What ones do you
think you will use in your classroom?
- When will you use them?
- Organized activities?
- Rainy Day?
- Why will you use them?
- How do activities such as these help students score higher of the MEAP?
Conclusion
NASA has an educational outreach program designed to help teachers bring the
excitement of space and active real world science into the classroom. In this
presentation we have demonstrated how some of these materials can be used not
only to help students understand difficult concepts such as very small through
very large numbers, powers of 10 applied from quarks through distant galaxies,
laws of force and motion, the relationship of the manipulation of simple
arithmetic operations through understand log graphics, but even how NASA
materials can be the core of a complete courses. Teachers, administrators, and
instructional designers should leave this session with a better understanding of
the role that free NASA materials may have in making your instruction as
exciting as the very Structure and Evolution of the Universe in which we live.
Evaluations
We need to report your evaluations so please fill yours out and when you do,
you will get a copy of the booklet used primarily in today's presentation.
Resources
- GLAST Education and Public Mission Website
- Downloadable materials for this book (AND MORE):
- More Great materials from TOPS:
- If you want to order NASA materials,
Conclusion
NASA has an educational outreach program designed to help teachers bring the
excitement of space and active real world science into the classroom. In this
presentation we have demonstrated how some of these materials can be used not
only to help students understand difficult concepts such as very small through
very large numbers, powers of 10 applied from quarks through distant galaxies,
laws of force and motion, the relationship of the manipulation of simple
arithmetic operations through understand log graphics, but even how NASA
materials can be the core of a complete courses. Teachers, administrators, and
instructional designers should leave this session with a better understanding of
the role that free NASA materials may have in making your instruction as
exciting as the very Structure and Evolution of the Universe in which we live.
References
Please note that the references were embedded in the presentation and URLs to
the sources listed throughout the presentation paper.
About the author
Dr. Mary Garrett
is and
Educator/Ambassador for NASA's Structure and Evolution of the Universe
Educational Outreach Program. Mary Garrett earned her PhD in Educational
Systems Development, (instructional technology emphasis) from Michigan State
University. She has taught at the post-Secondary level for more than 20 years.
She has won numerous awards for outstanding instruction and frequently presents
at International, National, and State conferences on instructional design and
educational technology issues. She is certified to teach at the secondary level and has developed instruction
and taught on-line since 1995. Retired from full time instruction, she now works
as an adjunct instructor for secondary and post secondary institutions.