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NASA Science News for March 4, 2003

The Cosmos is the Classroom
===========================

At an upcoming workshop, teachers will learn to use black holes and
other wonders of X-ray astronomy to teach science in their own
classrooms. 

March 4, 2003: No one knows why young people find black holes so
fascinating. Maybe it's the aura of a mysterious object shrouded in
darkness. Maybe it's the notion that black holes are portals to
distant parts of the Universe or to "parallel dimensions." Or maybe
it's the awe-inspiring power of an object that gobbles up everything
nearby, even light. 

Whatever the reason, black holes are "cool." And that means they
belong in the classroom. 

"Let's face it," says Mitzi Adams, an astronomer at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center (MSFC), "an apple falling on Newton's head doesn't 
grab today's movie- and video game-saturated teenagers, much less fill 
them with a passion to learn about gravity, mass, and density."

But even Hollywood special effects can't hold a candle to the
real-life phenomena that populate our Universe, such as black holes
and supernovas. Just imagine the reaction in a classroom if one day
the teacher said, "Okay class, today we're going to look at real data
from a real telescope of a real black hole that's about 3,000
light-years from Earth." You can almost see their eyes widening now.

The message to the students is clear: these amazing objects are real,
and all that "boring stuff" in the textbook is the way to understand
them. 

This summer, July 20-23, NASA will sponsor a pair of teacher's
workshops to help teachers bring the excitement of real-world
astronomy into their own classrooms. One workshop will convene near
the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, the
other at the Wright Center for Science Education at Tufts University
in Medford, Massachusetts. 

Experts will be on hand to explain black holes, supernova explosions,
binary stars, comets, planets and more ... but lectures are just the
beginning: Teachers will also learn to use a simple version of the
same powerful software professional astronomers use to transform raw
data into important and meaningful conclusions. The data will come
from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a NASA space telescope sensitive
to light in the X-ray range of the electromagnetic spectrum. These
real-life data from Chandra are at the core of "inquiry based"
classroom activities to be presented at the workshops. 

"There's a big move to teach science, instead of with a lecture mode,
through the discovery mode ... sometimes called 'inquiry based'
teaching," says Adams, who is organizing the Huntsville meeting. 

The two workshops stem from a collaboration between NASA's MSFC and
the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory (CXC). "These organizations have been working together for 
over 20 years to develop and launch the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and 
now they are collaborating on education activities," says Kathy 
Lestition, director of education and public outreach at CXC.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is ideal for observing such things as
black holes and supernovas. Black holes are invisible to normal
telescopes, of course, because light cannot escape their immense
gravity. But this gravity also attracts surrounding dust and gas.
"When matter falls toward the black hole, it becomes heated to very
high temperatures and emits X-rays," explains Adams. "So if you see
X-rays coming from an area of the sky in which there's no star visible 
... then that's a possible candidate for a black hole." 

Teachers will be able to show their students real images of these
clouds of doomed matter, explaining how knowledge of physics lets you 
"connect the dots" between the observed cloud and the hidden black 
hole in its center. 

Support to attend each workshop is available for approximately 30
science teachers. Application forms can be found on the Internet at
HighEnergyTeaching.com. Applicants will be selected based on who "will 
get the most out of the workshop," Adams says.

Ultimately, it will be the students who get the most out of it. In
their fascinating exposure to the real-world science of the darkest
objects in the Universe, they may discover the illumination that
learning science can bring. 

Credits & Contacts
Author: Patrick L. Barry 
Responsible NASA official: Ron Koczor 
Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips 
Curator: Bryan Walls 
Media Relations: Steve Roy

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