Lessons From My Childhood on How to Teach

One of the best parts of my job is getting to do outreach.  This is going out and teaching the public about the research that I do.  Since I love what I do and those that I encounter are usually interested in what I have to say or they wouldn't be there (like you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't want to), it is almost always a rewarding experience all around.  However, I had some childhood experiences with outreach that were, well, a little traumatic.  However, they have taught me lessons that I use every time I teach whether in the classroom, engaging the public at LIGO, or writing for you.

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"HAIR-RAISING" TRAUMA

Ever since I was a young child, I've always known that where I am now is where I wanted to be.  That is, I've always known that I wanted to be a physicist or an astronomer.  Of course, that's not what I said; I wanted to be an astronaut since that is the hero job for the physical sciences.  My family has also been supportive of me and one of my favorite things to do was go to the planetarium.  At the time, I lived outside of Pittsburgh, PA and we would go to the Buhl Planetarium (before it became part of the newer Carnegie Science Center - the building is now part of the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh).

Front entrance of the Buhl Planetarium in Pittsburgh, PA. [Source: Wikipedia]

On the fateful trip in question, I was no more than 7 or 8 years old and I was watching a demonstration in between planetarium shows with my father.  The presenter asked for a volunteer from the crowd, preferably with long fine hair.  The next thing I felt is my father's hand on my back pushing me forward.  I wasn't interested in being the center of attention, but the presenter thought that I would be perfect for the role.

She called me forward and had me stand on a plastic milk crate beside a metal dome that was bigger than my head.  She told me that I was going to have to hold on the the metal dome with one hand but I was not to do a list of things or I would get hurt.  Then I was worried.  She had me put one hand on the dome and turned the machine on.  It made a lot noise and I feel an odd tingling over my skin.  Then I was scared.  The presenter was very happy about everything and told me to shake my head.  I did so timidly.  Then she encouraged me to shake my head with more vigor.  I shook the heck out of my head so she would leave me alone and I could be done with all of this.  Then EVERYONE who is watching this demonstration WAS LAUGHING AT ME.  Then they applauded as the machine was turned off and I was helped down from my perch and left to think I was being laughed at.

The machine with the big metal dome attached to the top.  I later discovered that this is a Van de Graaff generator.  [Source: UMN Physics department]

It wasn't until I was in middle school that I figured out why everyone was laughing at me.  That machine was a Van de Graaff generator and it deposited static electricity on me.  The warnings that worried me were to prevent me from getting "zapped" and everyone was laughing at me because my hair was standing on end.  The harder I shook my head, the more the static electricity made my hair stand out.  A lot like this:

WHAT WENT WRONG?:  The presenter didn't show me what I looked like in a mirror (as is featured in the clip above) or tell me what I looked like.  I had no idea why everyone was laughing at me or what the point of the "hair raising" demonstration was.  Without this knowledge, I walked away from the experience thinking that everyone was really laughing at ME and not the effects of static electricity.

LESSON LEARNED:  If you use a volunteer in a demonstration, make sure that they understand what is happening.

I don't have many occasions where I need a volunteer for a demonstration, but when I do I make the volunteer the focus of the demonstration so that, at the very least, they walk away understanding what happened. 

Read more about how Van de Graaff generators work.

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SWINGING FOR A "BREAKTHROUGH"

When I was too young for school, I wanted to be a big girl and play school.  Even then I loved science.  One day I convinced my father to play school with me.  Using the sliding green chalk board doors on my toy box, my father taught me about the layers of the Earth.

A toy box much like the one my father used to play school with me.  [Source: It's Still Life blog]

The Earth's layers can be generalized into 4 main layers: the crust at the surface where we live, then the mantle, and finally the outer and inner cores.

Diagram showing the layers of the Earth.  [Source: About Earth blog]

I was told that the crust was very thin and the mantle is hot molten rock (magma) [note: only the mantle near the outer core is molten but the mantle under the crust is about 1000^oF so I equated that to "molten" too as a child].  I'd seen documentaries about volcanoes on television and knew what "molten rock" meant.  This completely changed the way I saw the swing set in my back yard.  Why?  Well, have you noticed the divot under the swings where you drag your feet to slow the swing to a stop?  I saw that as eating away at the crust and I was afraid that I would break through to the mantle and sink my feet into molten rock!  I know that it really isn't logical since I'd seen deeper holes before and there was nothing but dirt at the bottom, but I was a little kid and didn't think like that.  Anyway, I then was afraid of breaking through the crust if I dragged my feet and I was too chicken to jump off.  That left me sitting on the swing waiting for it to slow down on its own.  The wait took a lot of the fun out of swinging!

WHAT WENT WRONG?:  The scale of "thick" and "thin" was not established.  When I heard that the crust was thin, I defined for myself what "thin" was.  I assumed it was only as deep as I could dig through it.  What "thin" really meant is compared to the size (radius) of the Earth.

For the record, the radius of the Earth is almost 4,000 miles and the crust is up to about 22 miles.  Since 22 miles is much, much less than 4,000 miles, the crust is indeed "thin" compared to the size of the Earth!

LESSON LEARNED:  When you tell someone that something is "big" or "small", make sure you establish what you are comparing that something to, i.e. make sure you set the scale for your comparison.

I sometimes tell this story after I admonish people to always ask a scientist how big or small they think "big" or "small" are.  I tell them that I think a "big" gravitational wave, one that we would only expect to see every 10 years or so, would change the length of LIGO's 4 km (2.5 mile) long arms less than 1/1000^th the diameter of a proton (10^-18 m).   That may be "big" to me now, but to a 5-year-old me something smaller than an atom would be most certainly be considered "small". 

Gravity - The Love Story I: Black Holes Are Not 'Universal' Drains

This semester I am teaching a conceptual physics class at LSU that uses minimal mathematics to understand how the Universe works.  Yesterday, we covered the chapter on gravity and my closing question to my students was, "What would happen to the Earth's orbit if the Sun were to become a black hole instantly?"  Assume that it simply changes in size from what it is now to how big a black hole with the same mass would be and the center of mass never changes.

I'm not going to make you wait...  Nothing would happen to the Earth's orbit!

This is one of the most dramatic examples of simply using an equation to tell a story that I have come across.  I suspect that much of the drama comes from the misconception that black holes WILL consume EVERYTHING, turning most people's mental picture of a black hole into a universal drain.

(I know the following analogy is a bit corny, but it makes the point that equations can tell stories and aren't just recipes to combine numbers into new numbers...)


EQUATIONS TELL A STORY

In order to resolve this misconception, consider Newton's law of universal gravitation:

  

Now, don't worry overly that this is an equation because we will be making no calculations.  Instead, we are going to use it as a script for a play.  This play just so happens to be a love story...  ♥


THE CAST OF CHARACTERS

On the left side of "=" we don't have a character, but the ending of our story: F.  (This is the gravitational force that will be felt between two masses.)  We can also think of F as the attraction between our characters.  Therefore, the larger the attraction F, the better the 'Happily ever after...' ending.

The story is told by our characters on the right side of "=": G, m₁, m₂, and r:

• G is a VERY small constant that is fundamental to the Universe.  That is, there is no way to derive its value from any theory, we simply determined this value from measurements.  Since G doesn't change, it is more of a background prop than a character; we don't need to worry about it since the moral of our story will be the same with or without it.
• Next we have our two lovers: masses m₁ and m₂.  I call them lovers because they are attracted to each other (literally since gravity tends to pull mass together).  
• Finally, we have our villain, r, who keeps our lovers apart.  (This is the distance between each of our lovers' center of mass.)  

That is the complete cast of characters in this story!  There are no extras milling around in the background.


THE PLOT

When you multiply G, m₁, and m₂ together and then divide by r² (which is equivalent to r*r), you are able to determine the ending to our story which is the attraction (F) between our lovers.  Now we are able to establish some plot points:

• The more massive either of our lovers (m₁ or m₂) are, the more they will be attracted to each other.
• The farther apart (r) they are, the less they will be attracted to each other; the bigger the number you divide by, the smaller your result.  (The square on r only serves to make the reduction in attraction between our lovers less even faster.  For example, if you double the distance between the lovers, you quarter their attraction.)

THE SUBPLOT

Now let's take a look at some of the more subtle plot points, specifically the properties that determine the attraction of our lovers (m₁ and m₂):

• No unrequited love:  m₁ and m₂ are always equally attracted to each other.  It doesn't matter if one is more massive than the other.  
• Love is blind:  There is nothing in our script which describes the size or shape of our lovers.  Assuming m₁ and m₂ stay the same distance apart and their masses don't change, they will always be equally attracted to each other.  m₁ will love m₂ the same regardless of whether its mass is made up of dense muscle or voluminous blubber. 

"ACTION!"

Now that we have the script to our play, let's see how the ending turns out when we cast the Sun as m₁ and the Earth as m₂.  The scene opens the with Earth orbiting the Sun a fixed distance r away (this is called an astronomical unit, AU, and it is about 93 million miles).  We sit and watch the Sun and the Earth be attracted to each other, but the villain of distance keeps them apart.  In an attempt to overcome our villain, the Sun decides to implode on itself, sucking all of its mass into a ball less than about 3.72 miles across.  Now it is a black hole but, according to our script, the Earth felt no change since its love it blind!  The mass of the Sun didn't change and its center is still in the same place.  Drat, the Sun didn't succeed in increasing its attraction with the Earth!

~ FIN ~

♥  Stay tuned for the next installment of "Gravity - The Love Story"!  We will find out what properties our lovers need to have to come together (that is, what properties a mass needs to have to actually get "eaten" by a black hole).  ♥

My New Jobs and Working in Academia

THE NEW JOBS

I've talked before about my current position as a postdoc (short for postdoctoral scholar/researcher/fellow/etc.).  This is a temporary position very much like a medical doctor's residency.  I've held this position for the past 5 years and I've loved it, so much so that I managed to land myself a more permanent position, or I should say positions since I now have 2 jobs.

My first job that will be replacing my postdoc (which is up at the end of the month) is "Data Analysis and EPO Scientist" for Caltech but working at the LIGO Livingston Observatory (EPO stands for Education and Public Outreach).  This is a half-time position that will allow me to continue my LIGO research and continue to perform outreach.  Basically, this new scientist job at LIGO will let me to keep doing what I've been doing for the last 5 years.

My second job is an instructor position in the LSU physics department.  This semester I am teaching conceptual physics (PHSC 1001: Physical Science) which is sometimes referred to as "physics for poets".  I am especially excited about teaching the class at LSU because many of the students are future teachers themselves.  I've taught the equivalent course to this while I was at Penn State (PHYS 001: The Science of Physics).  This was the one course I had complete control over while I was at Penn State: including text book selection, lecture & exam creation, etc.  I picked this class because it is hard to teach.  Through my previous teaching experience, I discovered that the less math you use in a physics class, the harder it is to teach.  Calculus-based physics is MUCH easier to teach than algebra-based; not because the students in the calculus-based physics class are smarter (which isn't true), but because a teacher can use math as a crutch and not have to truly articulate concepts.


THE GOOD AND THE BAD

I am really thrilled about my jobs.  Not only do I have a job (with benefits) in this economic climate, but it is in my field and doing what I love to do.  I am also back in the classroom which I missed (but loved the work in outreach I've been doing).  I get to continue doing to LIGO research.

In a sense, I have a very non-traditional "professorship" since I get to teach and do research.  The reason this isn't really a professorship is that I do not have the ability to earn tenure.  In academia, after a certain amount of time (usually 7 years) you are eligible for a promotion that makes you a permanent member of the faculty at the school.  In higher education, the evaluation criteria usually include the quality of your research (usually measured on the amount of grants you obtained and papers that you published), your teaching, and your service to the school and the profession.  At very big research schools, much more weight is placed on research; in smaller liberal arts colleges, teaching is often more important.  The fact that I am in a non-tenure track position is good in that I don't have to worry about obtaining my own research funds or publish stacks of papers and it is bad in that I am never going to have the security that tenure could bring me.  Of course, I have the option of leaving my current positions in the future and finding a tenure-track job (which isn't easy to do these days).

Another good aspect about my split position is that it think it is pretty hard to get laid off from two different jobs at the same time.  I guess that's a kind of job security...  I may not have tenure but it will be hard for me to be completely unemployed.

Ultimately, I am thrilled that two different universities are willing to claim me and I still get to do what I love...  It doesn't get much better than that!

On Outreach...

In my last post, I mentioned that I recently visited Ole Miss to give a colloquium on outreach for their physics department.  Later that night, I also gave a talk at a local bakery on multi-messenger astronomy (public events like this are called "Science Cafes").  The colloquium on outreach was interesting to do since it made me organize my thoughts from my experiences here at LIGO (and this blog was featured) and I wanted to share my thoughts on engaging students and discussing religious issues in general.

The beginning of my colloquium at Ole Miss.

ENGAGING STUDENTS

I specialize in being the scientist that people talk to when they visit LIGO.  That includes taking visitors on a tour of the control room (where all the science happens).  I think everything I talk about is immensely interesting, but some of my visitors (especially the younger ones) will disagree.  So, how can I make this interesting for them?  Usually, anything that is gross (yet age appropriate) will get their attention.

One of the features of LIGO I like to point out is our outstanding vacuum system.  LIGO has 300,000 cubic feet of volume in a vacuum that is 8x better than the vacuum of space the space station is currently orbiting in (that is a trillionth of the atmospheric pressure you are sitting in now).  For some visitors, this is impressive; for others, not so much.  Then I talk about how your blood would boil if you went into our vacuum without a spacesuit.  And I put a little dramatic emphasis on the "boil" part.  Now I've got their attention!

Why would our blood boil if we were inside LIGO's vacuum?

The reason that blood would boil in our vacuum isn't because of temperature.  Rather, it is because our blood stores oxygen and carbon dioxide in solution.  How much it can store is dependent on the pressure that surrounds our body.  Going from atmospheric pressure to 1/1,000,000,000,000^th that pressure would allow the oxygen and carbon dioxide to be released from solution in the form of bubble.  Hence, it "boils".  To give an example that most of us encounter in our daily lives, this "boiling" is similar to what happens when you open a 2 liter bottle of soda (or pop, or Coke depending on where you live) - you release the pressure in the bottle and the bubbles come out of the drink.  Another example that many people have heard of is deep sea divers suffering from the bends when they surface too quickly.

RELIGIOUS ISSUES

In one of my first blog posts, I stated that I don't want to argue religious issues here.  I want to make clear that I am not making any statements for or against a view, I simply want to talk about DISCUSSING religious issues when the come up.

Many people who visit LIGO have strongly held religious convictions.  Fortunately, there is very little controversy over LIGO science and religion.  The one concept that can have religious implications if the Big Bang.  This theory (and I mean a scientific theory that is supported by evidence, not a hunch) states that the Universe was once contained in a very dense, very small ball and time effectively started in a large explosion.  This is at odds with many types of creationism.  While this can yield lively debate, that is not something I am interested in doing with visitors; my goal is to talk about science and what LIGO can reveal about our Universe.

My goal when faced with situations like this is to treat everyone with respect no matter what their beliefs are.  Just like it is unlikely for them to convert me to their worldview (assuming it is different from mine), I know it is unlikely for me to change theirs.  So I define what kinds of questions science can and cannot answer: science only ever asks "How?" not "Why?".  For the "Why?" you need to turn to philosophy and religion.  With respect to the Big Bang and creationism, I point out that evidence exists to support the Big Bang in the Cosmic Microwave Background.  But, even if this is not the relic light from the Big Bang, something created it and whatever it was may have also created gravitational waves.  So, while one of our documentaries claims that we are seeking the gravitational waves from the Big Bang (and many other sources), we are really seeking the gravitational waves from whatever created the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Some have accused me of skirting the subject in the way I handle religious issues and they are mostly right.  I try to respect everyone and re-frame the contentious issue in a way that doesn't conflict with religious beliefs and is still true to the science.  But I think it is also important to make the distinction in what science can and cannot do.  Some people believe that science tries to disprove God but the truth is it can't.  Science also can never prove God.

Using Astronomy to Teach Physics Workshop and AAPT Summer Meeting

I've just returned from a week long trip to Nebraska for 2 conferences, one in Lincoln and the other in Omaha.

Using Astronomy to Teach Physics Workshop:

The Lincoln trip was for a special workshop on Using Astronomy to Teach Physics (UATP).  The goal of this workshop is to bring educators in physics and astronomy together, share the information on the state-of-the-art science projects in their fields and then breakout into small groups to identify ways to bring this frontier science into the undergraduate physics curriculum.  I put together a professional poster (see my post on the different types of posters for more information on scientific posters) on the educational work done in the Science Education Center (SEC) at LIGO, both locally and nationally as part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration's Education and Public Outreach (EPO) group [this group has just announced its partnership with the 2012 US Science & Engineering Festival].  (I will put a link to this post as soon as it becomes publicly viewable.) While I was making this poster, I found pictures of all of the SEC staff and myself engaging students and the public in some way.  For my picture, I found one that I adore (which is shocking since I hate nearly all pictures of myself) that shows me talking to school students while giving a tour of the LIGO control room:

I found this workshop particularly interesting for 2 reasons: 1) there were talks on the different frontier astronomy projects to make sure everyone in attendance at least had a working knowledge of what the state-of-the-art is and 2) there were breakout sessions where groups who were interested in similar goals met to discuss actionable ways to incorporate the new astronomy into the undergraduate physics curriculum.  My big project that I am now working on as a direct consequence of this is a document I intend to publish in the American Journal of Physics on connections between the basic physics concepts taught in the undergraduate physics courses and the technology that makes LIGO possible.  For example:

LIGO is looking for gravitational waves that will change the length of its 4 km arms less than 1/1000th the diameter of a proton (that's 0.000000000000000001 meters).  At this length scale, one must consider the effects of quantum mechanics.  So, here's the issue: the thermal vibration of the atoms in the mirrors used in LIGO is going to be much bigger than the "big" gravitational wave cited above.  How can LIGO possibly hope ever detect gravitational waves distinctly from this thermal mirror vibration?  (The 'no math' answer is at the end of this post.)  

After publication of this document, I am thinking about approaching LIGO's EPO group to propose that we create a web site to support this kind of effort.  Basically, I would like to take the document apart and use it to make a skeleton for the web site.  Then, any time a LIGO member has a homework question, activity, etc. that they use in their classroom, they can contribute that content to the site so that anyone who is interested can also use that content.

AAPT Summer Meeting:

After 3 days in Lincoln, I then went to the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Summer Meeting in Omaha.  There I got to make new friends in the Physics Instructional Resource Association (PIRA) and we did something together just about every night (which, if you know me, is remarkable since I am the type to hole up in my hotel room during down time).  I also co-presented an invited talk on LIGO outreach using demonstrations with my colleague Kathy Holt.  Demonstrations are really at the core of the outreach we so since we do demonstrations with teachers and give them the tools they need to take those demonstrations back to their classrooms, we do demonstrations during public open houses and there is often a demonstration or two when we work with student field trips.  It was great doing this talk with Kathy since the combination of our backgrounds (she was a teacher before working at LIGO) give different and useful perspectives on what we do in the SEC.

Then, besides going to other talks, I also had some academic service obligations.  I believe that I have mentioned that I am on the APS Forum on Education (FEd) Executive Committee.  Even though the AAPT is not affiliated with the APS, they work together closely since they both serve physicists but with different focus.  Because of this, the AAPT Executive Board meets with the APS FEd Exec. Comm. to coordinate efforts and we had a good lunch meeting this year.  I am also on the AAPT Committee on Graduate Education in Physics and this committee also met to make plan for the upcoming AAPT Meetings and to discuss the broader impact activities we are undertaking.

In past blog posts, I have included pictures of the city I happened to travel to as seen from my hotel window (see Long Beach, Milwaukee, Anaheim).  The view out of my window was a horrible view of a parking lot and another hotel.  Fortunately, the view from my colleague's room was much better (she got a room in the main hotel for the conference and I didn't since I waited too long to make my reservations).  So, here is the view of Omaha from the window:

OH!  One more thing...  When I was flying from Omaha (whose airport in actually in Iowa), the north terminal of airport of evacuated for a "suspicious package".  Luckily for me, I was flying out of the south terminal.  Once I got home, I found out that the hours long closing was due to someone's physics classroom apparatus that got TSA's panties in a bunch (it went through security as a carry-on).  I suppose it's good that they were awake enough to think something suspicious but what concerns me is that it is almost a certainty that the same thing was carried on the plane to get to the meeting at all.  I guess it wasn't as threatening then :) 

Answer to the quantum mechanics question posed above (highlight text below to uncover the answer):

The thermal vibration of the mirror's atoms would indeed make it impossible to measure a gravitational wave only if the laser was so well focused as to only shine on the area of a few of the mirror's surface atoms.  Fortunately, that is not the case in LIGO!  The beam spot on the mirror is about 10 cm (4 inches) in diameter.  In that area, there are MANY surface atoms that are vibrating.  By observing this large area, LIGO effectively averages over the vibration of all of the atoms that the light falls on yielding a zero net motion.  Thus, LIGO works just fine!

This xkcd Comic Hit Home With Me: "Teaching Physics"

xkcd is a comic that tends to be a bit on the academic side but I think their warning disclaimer tells you better what this comic series about than I can:

"Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)."

Of course, this warning is tongue-in-cheek but it does give you a flavor of what the comic series contains.

My husband forwarded this comic from this a few days ago called "Teaching Physics" (click on it to see the full size image on xkcd.com):

Now, I have talked at length on this blog about doing education outreach at LIGO.  In that process, I interact with many students, teachers and people from the public and I use the 'rubber sheet' analogy often when describing that gravity it really an effect of the curvature of space-time.  However, this only works if one thinks about a real rubber sheet that they could interact with on Earth, i.e. there is still gravity around to pull masses down on the sheet.  Most people have no problem overlooking the fact that we are using gravity to describe the curvature of space-time but there are the few who bring up the paradox to me.

This is where I disagree with how the instructor in this comic handled the situation.  To me, the correct response is not to sigh and dismiss this useful (if imperfect) analogy.  Instead, I recognize that the observation is a valid one and compliment the person on being insightful (usually including that most people don't see the problem).  I then ask them to take the gravity around them for granted and just use the rubber sheet as a visualization tool.  After all, there are many analogies in physics but if you think about any of them for too long you start finding imperfections in them.  (Like using water waves to describe properties of light [electromagnetic] waves - a few problems with this include that water waves need a medium [water] to propagate and water waves are easily damped when light isn't.)

I'm not criticizing the author of this comic!  After all, I don't think this instructor is doing "outreach" as much as teaching in a formal education setting.  I've had a lot of experience there too and, depending on the student (like are they the kind that try to be difficult at every turn or are they truly being insightful), I very well may have had the same reaction.  And I just love that there is a comic out there that makes me jump up and say, "That's happened to me!"

Weekend at the APS April Meeting

The APS April Meeting started in full swing on Saturday 30 April.  The meeting is composed of many (~12 or so) parallel sessions during the day (form 8:30 am to 5 pm).  These sessions are composed of invited talk (about 30 minutes each) and contributed talks (about 12 minutes each).  In the evenings, there is usually a feature presentation and on Saturday night was on of the best ones I've been to.  This event was titled "The Physics of Hollywood" with panelists Bill Prady (executive producer and co-creator of "The Big Bang Theory"), Bruce Miller (executive producer of "Eureka") and John de Lancie (the character "Q" from "Star Trek: The Next Generation").  Junnifer Ouellette (author of "The Physics of the Buffyverse" was the moderator.  The picture below is from the back of the room when they were showing a clip from "The Big Bang Theory":

The panel at the front is hard to see here, so here is a zoom:

The people seated by the screen are (from right to left): Ouellette, Prady, Miller and de Lancie.  It was great!  They even answered one of the questions I have wondered about for a while:  Exactly what positions do these characters hold at the university?  They are clearly not grad students but they don't seem to be faculty members either.  Well, it turns out they are just like me...  They are postdocs!

I also had another "in the wild" sighting of the "Gravitational Waves" poster I worked on with the APS.  The picture below is the poster as it was distributed on the APS outreach table:

 

After another full day of listening to talks (I primarily go to sessions focused on gravity or education, unless there is something I don't specialize in that seems especially appealing) on Sunday, I had the Executive Committee Meeting of the Forum on Education (I serve on the Committee as an APS-AAPT Member-at-Large).  The FEd is just one of many units that members of the APS can join that address their special interest and their executive committees are the way these units are governed.  (Perhaps I should write a blog post detailing the governance structure of the APS - but perhaps that is more bureaucracy than anyone is really interested in...)  I may be very early in my career, but I have always felt welcomed by these physicists who are much more distinguished than myself.  So, I love going to these meetings (we only have one face-to-face meeting a year) and I get fed too!

That pretty much sums up my weekend at the APS April Meeting!  There are 2 more days left and I speak on the last day (Tuesday).  I am in the final stages of getting my talk approved by the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations since my talk is on their behalf.  I will write more about this process, how the talk went and about a few other things I got to do while at the meeting.

Last Day at the LIGO-Virgo Meeting

Today is the last day I am at the LIGO-Virgo Meeting in CA.  While the main meeting is over, last afternoon and today is the Education and Public Outreach (EPO) retreat.  This is different from the education work I do at the LIGO Livingston Science Education Center (that is physically on-site at one of the LIGO observatories) since the EPO group seeks to serve the all of the public (not just those people geographically near the observatories) and this work is done by all of the collaboration, in this country and around the world.

One of the fun things that have been developed recently and used for education and outreach are computer games about gravity and gravitational waves!

***

SPACE TIME QUEST (created by the gwoptics group at the University of Birmingham, UK)

You are the principal investigator (PI) of an interferometric gravitational wave observatory like LIGO.  You select the location for your detector and design it to fit within the budget for your project.  At the end of the game, you turn on your detector and look for gravitational waves.  The deeper into space you can detect gravitational waves, the higher your score (and you can compare your score against others' high scores).  My first try at the game, I was able to detect gravitational waves from more than 29 Mpc (~94.5 million light years) away.

***

BLACK HOLE PONG (also created by the gwoptics group at the University of Birmingham, UK)

This is a new take on the classic game "Pong" except instead of paddles, you use black holes to gravitationally move and sling a mass into your opponent's half of the screen.  Every time the mass enters your opponent's space, you score a point.  This is currently a 2 player only game (you can't play against the computer yet) and you can even use your Xbox controllers!

***

SLINGSHOT (created by the RIT Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation)

The goal of this strategy game is to shoot your opponent's spacecraft on the opposite side of the screen.  However, there are planets in between that attract your projectile gravitationally (they warp space-time) deflecting it from a straight path (the game name of Slingshot refers to the fact that stars, planets and moons can be used as a gravitational slingshot to speed up spacecrafts or other masses - NASA used this to get the astronauts from Apollo 13 back to Earth when they were low on fuel).  The strategy is to account for these deflections and still destroy your opponent's spacecraft.  This 2 player game can be very addictive!  Download it here.

***

Talk to you next week!  (Below is a picture of me at the LIGO-Virgo Meeting taken by my friend, Cristina Torres:)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY...

Like I mentioned in a previous post, being at the LIGO-Virgo Meeting always overlaps with my sister's birthday.  That being said:  "Happy Birthday, Brie!"

This is Brie and me at her high school graduation last May (I am much older than her [don't you dare ask how much] and no, neither one of us is adopted).

On Science Posters, Three Ways...

In my last post, I mentioned that I presented a poster at a recent physics workshop.  Today, I want to tell you more about the role that posters play in science.

I believe pretty much everyone is familiar with a poster.  Most people have had one hanging in their bedroom, office, etc. at some point in their life.  Posters are used to communicate in some way, be it a motto, a feeling, etc.  In science, posters are used to educate and I feature three levels of this education here.

THE BASIC INTRIGUING POSTER

PhysicsQuest Poster

This poster is meant to get the audience thinking about the world around them and the matter that they are made up of.  The audience is broad, but this particular poster is geared to get elementary and secondary students excited about science (thereby learning the answer to this teaser - which you can do by clicking on the link below the poster).  Note that this poster is mostly composed of graphics with minimal text.  The audience is hooked quickly.

THE EDUCATION POSTER

APS Education Posters

Yes, I am not beyond shameless self-promotion!  You have seen this poster before in a previous post.  I worked with the APS to create this poster that discusses what gravitational waves are, where they come from, how we plan on detecting them and why we are interested in them.  The audience for this poster is mostly high school and college students as well as anyone who is interested enough to read through the poster.  That is a hallmark difference between this poster and the basic intriguing poster - the amount of text (which will only get worse with the professional poster).  There are eye-catching graphics on this poster, but that is not the focal point.  This poster is also delineated into clear topical sections (where there was only a single message in the basic poster).  These delineations are made clear with the use of white space, background color and text grouping. 

THE PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCE POSTER

Poster in the LIGO Document Control Center

This poster is the most intensive of the three I talk about here.  When a scientist takes a poster to a conference, the poster is meant to present their research for them in place of them giving a talk.  Most meetings will have poster sessions where the attendees roam around a room displaying posters and discuss the work with the author that is usually standing nearby.  Posters can also stand for themselves during coffee breaks and other social times during the meeting.

Note that the text on the professional poster is the feature.  Graphics are also important, since they can often communicate complex concepts more efficiently than words, but these are used in support of the text.  If they are eye-catching, all the better!  The audience for these posters is obviously other professionals, but there can still be a broad range there.  For example, a poster I prepare to present at a LIGO centered conference can safely assume that the audience is familiar with the basics of the science and familiar with our jargon.  But at meeting where there are scientists from different fields, even different fields in physics, care needs to be made to make sure that jargon isn't used (which is difficult to do when you are so used to using these specialized terms).  Also, since there is so much being communicated, these posters can become quite large in size - I have one hanging in my office right now that is 3 feet by 4 feet!

SUMMARY

What poster a scientist creates depends on the goal of the poster.  The more general the audience, the less text, more graphics and judicious use of white space is needed.  The more professional, the narrower the audience and text becomes more important.  In the end, what is really important is to consider the motivation of the audience - the more they know about the subject being presented, the longer they will be willing to stand in front of it and read it!