Introduction
The Education and Public Outreach ("E/PO") function is a multi-faceted feature of most scientific research programs and science education facilities. The E/PO function in astrophysics can bridge across a lot of useful topics and provide a lot of practical usefulness.
E/PO interfaces with students, teachers, and the general public to share the methods and discoveries of the researchers. This sharing provides mutual benefits: the discoveries are of interest and possible practical use to the citizenry, and the research programs are often funded through citizen/governmental support.
Therefore, providing effective E/PO efforts benefits the public along a spectrum of age groups and purposes:
- Youngsters gain “lifelong learner” interest in topical subjects;
- Industry manufactures useful new products;
- Topics of great intellectual curiosity are kept in the public eye;
- Continuation of research is promoted.
Having created and presented programs in astrophysical Education and Public Outreach for almost 20 years now, I offer the following specifics for discussion and comments.
Functions of E/PO Programs
- Introduce Content and Encourage and Inspire Further Investigations: This involves “setting the stage”, creating and stimulating interest, providing a content “scaffold”, and “setting the hook”: Example: Examining craters on the Moon and on Earth lead us to ideas of impacts and extinctions.
- Introduce and Promote Practice of Scientific Inquiry: How is scientific research done? Forming the question to be investigated, designing the experiment, collecting the data, displaying, interpreting, and presenting the data, attempting to reach rational conclusions, and consideration of uncertainties and further questions. This process applies to many topics encountered in everyday life, therefore understanding and being able to practice and implement this process is of critical importance to everyone.
- Provide Technical Exploration Opportunities and Resources: Science Literacy is generated by the active practice of science, programs need to facilitate hands on research in an efficient manner so that particularly students and teachers can readily access instruments, data, and analysis software.
Major Content Topics
Experientially, the following five topics seem to be be the ones that encompass a majority of Space Science subjects. Thus, this forms a list of content that most summary programs might incorporate:
- Your Connection to Space: How You are Directly Connected/Affected to/by phenomena happening far away: This is perhaps the most significant area to recognize, these issues are also part of the introduction and inspiration topics mentioned above. Examples include Sun, Moon, Stars, Impactors.
- Distances are Vast: This factor governs much of what we learn and how we go about exploring, strongly influencing the technologies used. Such fantastically large distances are difficult to represent, some sort of scale model or translating distances to travel times seem to promote comprehension of the vastness.
- There appears to be a Hierarchical Structure: So far we’ve learned that the Universe is built in layers. The vastness is more comprehensible when we classify objects and begin to organize them into a structure. Major zones include the Solar System, our Milky Way Galaxy, and then the Universe filled with many other Galaxies.
- You need Technologies to Explore this Distant Environment: Due to the vast distances, we primarily rely on incoming starlight (photons) as our primary source of data. We explore a wide variety of the spectrum (photon energies). The challenge is that since the photons spread out from their source, they are few and far between when they approach Earth. Hence we construct telescopes with large mirrors, use the grids of silicon in digital cameras, and place instruments in space to avoid distortion and attenuation from Earth’s atmosphere.
- The Sun-Earth-Moon system is the Basis for your Connection to Space: These three objects are the primary ones that govern our daily lives in terms of environment, comfort, and the keeping of time, as well as a lot of cultural phenomena, so this topic closely ties to topic Your Connection to Space above.
Data and Measurements of Phenomena Far Away - Light
- We need to recognize that the photons are the data – Most photons are emitted by stars due to the heat of the thermonuclear fusion within stars.
- Photons only give us three basic "features:"
1. Flux rate – how many photons per unit area, per unit time.
2. Energy – photon wavelength & color.
3. Coordinates – light-source position in sky of origin, or position on detector.
- We attempt to derive information about distant objects/phenomena by correlating features/change of features of the photons to models of their origin. This is the "How We Know What We Know" idea. By comparing what we observe from space with controlled experiments that involve light on Earth, such as noting spectra of chemicals in a laboratory, we can deduce the nature of physical substances and processes that are far away.
- All data has Uncertainty/"Noise" that must be taken into account. This is another major area of public misconception, that scientists know a lot and that scientific instruments and measurements give correct answers. There are no correct answers, only data with varying degrees of precision and thus uncertainty, and we need to understand and accept this uncertainty not only in strictly scientific data but also in our everyday lives as we count or vote or compare.
Some of the items listed above are of course common to most branches of science and also important in many other processes that we encounter every day. Thus, the E/PO function in astrophysics can bridge across a lot of useful topics and provide a lot of practical usefulness. I’d be interested in feedback on this “roadmap,” what other general or key concepts should be added, or what should be modified to better express the key elements of a successful outreach program?
Citation
Kang, Rick (Contributing Author); Bernard Haisch (Topic Editor). 2008. "Education and Public Outreach in Astronomy." In: Encyclopedia of the Cosmos. Eds. Bernard Haisch and Joakim F. Lindblom (Redwood City, CA: Digital Universe Foundation). [First published November 13, 2007].
<http://www.cosmosportal.org/articles/view/135545/>
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Introduction
The Education and Public Outreach ("E/PO") function is a multi-faceted feature of most scientific research programs and science education facilities. The E/PO function in astrophysics can bridge across a lot of useful topics and provide a lot of practical usefulness.
E/PO interfaces with students, teachers, and the general public to share the methods and discoveries of the researchers. This sharing provides mutual benefits: the discoveries are of interest and possible practical use to the citizenry, and the research programs are often funded through citizen/governmental support.
Therefore, providing effective E/PO efforts benefits the public along a spectrum of age groups and purposes:
- Youngsters gain “lifelong learner” interest in topical subjects;
- Industry manufactures useful new products;
- Topics of great intellectual curiosity are kept in the public eye;
- Continuation of research is promoted.
Having created and presented programs in astrophysical Education and Public Outreach for almost 20 years now, I offer the following specifics for discussion and comments.
Functions of E/PO Programs
- Introduce Content and Encourage and Inspire Further Investigations: This involves “setting the stage”, creating and stimulating interest, providing a content “scaffold”, and “setting the hook”: Example: Examining craters on the Moon and on Earth lead us to ideas of impacts and extinctions.
- Introduce and Promote Practice of Scientific Inquiry: How is scientific research done? Forming the question to be investigated, designing the experiment, collecting the data, displaying, interpreting, and presenting the data, attempting to reach rational conclusions, and consideration of uncertainties and further questions. This process applies to many topics encountered in everyday life, therefore understanding and being able to practice and implement this process is of critical importance to everyone.
- Provide Technical Exploration Opportunities and Resources: Science Literacy is generated by the active practice of science, programs need to facilitate hands on research in an efficient manner so that particularly students and teachers can readily access instruments, data, and analysis software.
Major Content Topics
Experientially, the following five topics seem to be be the ones that encompass a majority of Space Science subjects. Thus, this forms a list of content that most summary programs might incorporate:
- Your Connection to Space: How You are Directly Connected/Affected to/by phenomena happening far away: This is perhaps the most significant area to recognize, these issues are also part of the introduction and inspiration topics mentioned above. Examples include Sun, Moon, Stars, Impactors.
- Distances are Vast: This factor governs much of what we learn and how we go about exploring, strongly influencing the technologies used. Such fantastically large distances are difficult to represent, some sort of scale model or translating distances to travel times seem to promote comprehension of the vastness.
- There appears to be a Hierarchical Structure: So far we’ve learned that the Universe is built in layers. The vastness is more comprehensible when we classify objects and begin to organize them into a structure. Major zones include the Solar System, our Milky Way Galaxy, and then the Universe filled with many other Galaxies.
- You need Technologies to Explore this Distant Environment: Due to the vast distances, we primarily rely on incoming starlight (photons) as our primary source of data. We explore a wide variety of the spectrum (photon energies). The challenge is that since the photons spread out from their source, they are few and far between when they approach Earth. Hence we construct telescopes with large mirrors, use the grids of silicon in digital cameras, and place instruments in space to avoid distortion and attenuation from Earth’s atmosphere.
- The Sun-Earth-Moon system is the Basis for your Connection to Space: These three objects are the primary ones that govern our daily lives in terms of environment, comfort, and the keeping of time, as well as a lot of cultural phenomena, so this topic closely ties to topic Your Connection to Space above.
Data and Measurements of Phenomena Far Away - Light
- We need to recognize that the photons are the data – Most photons are emitted by stars due to the heat of the thermonuclear fusion within stars.
- Photons only give us three basic "features:"
1. Flux rate – how many photons per unit area, per unit time.
2. Energy – photon wavelength & color.
3. Coordinates – light-source position in sky of origin, or position on detector.
- We attempt to derive information about distant objects/phenomena by correlating features/change of features of the photons to models of their origin. This is the "How We Know What We Know" idea. By comparing what we observe from space with controlled experiments that involve light on Earth, such as noting spectra of chemicals in a laboratory, we can deduce the nature of physical substances and processes that are far away.
- All data has Uncertainty/"Noise" that must be taken into account. This is another major area of public misconception, that scientists know a lot and that scientific instruments and measurements give correct answers. There are no correct answers, only data with varying degrees of precision and thus uncertainty, and we need to understand and accept this uncertainty not only in strictly scientific data but also in our everyday lives as we count or vote or compare.
Some of the items listed above are of course common to most branches of science and also important in many other processes that we encounter every day. Thus, the E/PO function in astrophysics can bridge across a lot of useful topics and provide a lot of practical usefulness. I’d be interested in feedback on this “roadmap,” what other general or key concepts should be added, or what should be modified to better express the key elements of a successful outreach program?
Citation
Kang, Rick (Contributing Author); Bernard Haisch (Topic Editor). 2008. "Education and Public Outreach in Astronomy." In: Encyclopedia of the Cosmos. Eds. Bernard Haisch and Joakim F. Lindblom (Redwood City, CA: Digital Universe Foundation). [First published November 13, 2007].
<http://www.cosmosportal.org/articles/view/135545/>
Are you absolutely sure you want to delete this article? This process cannot be undone and is permanent.
Yes, Delete This Article
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