Scale the Universe
Exploring your Universe from Inner to Outer Space
Presented by: Sarah Silva and Phil Plait
NASA Education and Public Outreach
Sonoma State University
The NASA E/PO Program at Sonoma State University
• A group of eight people working collaboratively to educate the public about current and future NASA high energy astrophysics/astronomy missions.
• Led by Prof. Lynn CominskySwift
GLAST
XMM-Newton
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.
LAT
GBM
Smallest to Largest
• Name the smallest things that you can think of…
• What are some of the largest things you can think of?
• What about the most distant object?
Distance Tabs
• On your desk there should be one or more pieces of paper with masking tape on them.
• In groups - place these in order on the brown paper.
• The left hand side of the paper should have the small scale items and the right hand side of the paper should have the large scale items.
Well Known Objects…
• What was the most interesting thing that you found while lining up the distance tabs?
• Going back to our original list of small and large objects…– Is there anything on this list that wasn’t
mentioned in the tabs?
Earth and Moon System
• At your desk there should be precut moon rulers.
• Assemble them with the tape located on the tables.
• Using the moon rulers answer the questions on the two activity sheets.
• NOTE: For the second activity substitute the moon ball (golf ball) for the paper plate.
The Universe is a VERY Big Place
At least 13 billion light-years (or about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers)
It is full of VERY big numbers!
And small!
Scientific Notation and tens
10000 = 1x 104
1000= 1x 103
100 = 1x 102
10 = 1x 101
1 = 1x 100
0.1 = 1x 10-1
0.01 = 1x 10-2
0.001 = 1x 10-3
0.0001 = 1x 10-4
The Booklet
• This book is organized into 3-stand-alone sections:– A:
• A1: Orders of Magnitude• A2: Unit Analysis
– B:• B1: Ordering Distance – Sticky (what we just did!) and Cutout• B2: Using a Log Scale
– C:• C1: Scale the Universe (1)• C2: Scale the Universe (2)• C3: Scale the Universe (3)• C4: Proportional Thinking• C5: Ordering Time
Brainstorm Time
• How can we use this in our science classroom?– Biology Lessons– Astronomy Lessons– Introductions to scientific notation– ….
Resources
• GLAST Education and Public Mission Website– http://glast.sonoma.edu
• Downloadable materials for this book (AND MORE):– http://glast.sonoma.edu/teachers/teachers.html
• More Great materials from TOPS:– http://topscience.org/
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