Scale the Universe Exploring your Universe from Inner to Outer Space Presented by: Fill in your name here

The NASA Educator Ambassador Program at SSU You should modify this slide to fit you Swift GLAST XMM-Newton

What is GLAST? GLAST: Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope Planned for launch in 2007 First collaboration between US Dept. of Energy and NASA (to study the infinitessimal and the infinite) 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 from smallest to largest Modify this slide depending upon how you organize the activity (people standing at front of room with individual tabs, groups working at tables, etc.)

Distance Tabs What order are the tabs in? How did you come up with this order? Is there anything you are unsure of? How did you deal with unfamiliar objects?

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? –If so, where would they fall in our line-up?

Distance Tabs II On your desk there should be a different set of tabs, from the Solar System and Astronomical scales only. In groups - place these at the appropriate location along the Log Scale

Distance Tabs II What difficulties did you have while placing the tabs along the Log Scale? Look at the final placement of the tabs: –Where are the largest gaps? –What do those gaps mean?

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!

The Universe is a VERY Big Place Powers of 10 Screensaver Available at x.html For $19.99 if you want to show it.

The Universe is a VERY Big Place GLAST: The Connection By studying the largest things in the universe (GRB, AGN, etc), GLAST will help us understand the smallest things in the universe.

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 mathematics classroom? –Powers of 10 –Scientific Notation –Estimation –Units –Ratios –….

Resources GLAST Education and Public Mission Website – Downloadable materials for this book (AND MORE): – More Great materials from TOPS: –