Week 8: Presentations and Misconceptions

The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did.

In lab, we did presentations on topics about the galaxy, universe, stars and other space-related topics. I thought it was interesting going into detail about topics that I thought I knew more about. My group focused on the life cycle of stars for a topic, and we ran into some misconceptions in our own presentation. One of the misconceptions was that stars are close to other stars because we see them in constellations together, but in reality the stars are very far away from each other (millions of lightyears). Most other groups had misconceptions, but they were all common ones that are taught and believed by most people unknowingly. The origin of the Earth presentation was funny because a lot of their misconceptions were conspiracy theories (like flat Earth and hollow Earth). 

A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture.

In the lecture we learned that this Saturday (10/14) there is a partial solar eclipse. It's fun to see the concepts that we are learning play out in real life and be able to explain it to kids. We also learned about the Big Bang Theory and the creation of the universe. We learned that in solar systems, there are sometimes two suns, and creates a binary system. It makes me wonder about how everything in the universe seems to be perfect for human life and protects us (distance of the Sun, temperature of the Earth, stability of the solar system). 

Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading:

What did you learn? I learned about the space race and the Apollo 8 mission. I also learned that women had the advantage over men physically for being astronauts, but NASA did not allow them in space until Sally Ride. 

What was most helpful? I found the diagram of the star life cycle very helpful because there are several paths for stars to take and a visual is useful to help visualize it. I also thought the section on Earth and moon was helpful because it showed a lot of similarities and differences between the moon and Earth. 

What do you need more information on? I would like more information on black holes. I know there was a section about them and we did presentations in lab, but I am still so intrigued by them. 

What questions/concerns/comments do you have? None.