“Scale the Universe” Exploring your Universe from Inner to Outer Space Presented by: Teena Della NASA’s Educator Ambassador Teacher at Riverside Secondary

Cosmic Survey Activity Organize the 7 pictures as directed

How Big? Organize the 7 pictures from smallest to largest

How Big?

How Far? Organize the 7 pictures from closest to furthest

How Far?

How Old? Organize the 7 pictures from youngest to oldest

How Old?

What is GLAST/Fermi? GLAST: Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope Launched in 2008 (watch launch)‏watch launch Fermi has two instruments: –Large Area Telescope (LAT)‏ –Gamma ray Burst Monitor (GBM)‏ Fermi looks at many different objects within the energy range of 10keV to 300GeV. LAT GBM

EM Spectrum

Viewing the Universe in Different Wavelengths Visible Infrared Radio Gamma-ray

Who is GLAST/Fermi? A collaboration between the BIG (Astrophysics) and the small (Particle Physicists)‏ By studying the largest most energetic things in the Universe (GRB’s), answers to the smallest subatomic particle/energy relationships are hoped for. LAT GBM

What is GLAST/Fermi? 1 st ever pair conversion telescope –Gamma rays are produced in the annihilation of electron-positron pairs as dictated by relativity. –The GBM operated on a backwards principle; Turns gamma rays into electron-positron pairs that CAN be traced. GBM

The Universe is a VERY Big Place At least 13 billion light-years (or about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometres)‏ It is full of VERY big numbers! And very small!

Exponential Clothesline Place the numbers on the clothes line as indicated by the facilitator. Lowest on the left, highest on the right.

Exponential Clothesline Many students have difficulty expressing large numbers using exponential notation. The exponential clothesline helps to pre-assess student understanding of exponents by providing a visual representation of exponential notation (powers of ten). Materials: One 5-meter piece of clothesline (or string) Fourteen (14) clothespins (or paper clips) Fourteen (14) index cards with the following numbers: 0 written in red 1, 2, and 3, in blue 10 1, 10 2, 10 3, 10 6, 10 9, and in green (Or more numbers 10 -1, 10 -2, 10 -3, and in black to make class set) Depending on your group, you may wish to provide some larger (or smaller) exponents or include a set of numbers with exponents such as 2 x 10 0, 2 x 10 1, 2 x 10 2 and 2 x See my webpage for full instructions

Scientific Notation and Tens = 1x = 1x = 1x = 1x = 1x = 1x = 1x = 1x = 1x 10 -4

How this works:

Powers of Ten $100 bill is 0.1mm thick Then a Stack of $1000 (10x$100 bills) = 1mm thick Stack of $10,000 (100x$100 bills)= 1cm thick Stack of $100,000 (1000x$100 bills)= 10cm thick Stack of $1 million (10,000x$100 bills) = 1m thick Stack of $1 billion (100,000,000x=$100 bills) = 1km thick!!!

Light Year Drive Student produced video of the proportional distance of the nearest star (4.3 ly away):video

Distance Tabs On your desk there should be one or more pieces of paper with tape attached. Put them in order on the wall with: smallest on the left, largest on the right

Ordering Distance Objects Width of DNA Helix 2x10 -9 m

Ordering Distance Objects “Average Virus” 7.5x10 -8 m

Ordering Distance Objects “Average Bacterium” 2x10 -6 m

Ordering Distance Objects Height of “Average” Human 1.7x10 0 m

Ordering Distance Objects Mount Everest ( 8.85x10 3 m

Ordering Distance Objects Fermi Orbital distance above Earth’s Surface 5.5x10 5 m

Ordering Distance Objects Moon Radius ( images/d4/moon.jpg)‏ 1.74x10 6 m

Ordering Distance Objects Moon’s Orbital Radius & Sun 3.84x10 8 m

Ordering Distance Objects Earth Orbital Radius 1.5x10 11 m

Ordering Distance Objects Pluto Orbital Radius 5.9x10 12 m

Ordering Distance Objects HD70642 (Sun-like star with Jupiter-like planet)‏ 9.4x10 17 m

Ordering Distance Objects Crab Pulsar 7x10 19 m

Ordering Distance Objects Radius of the Milky Way (APOD 09/08/95)‏ 5x10 20 m

Ordering Distance Objects LCM – Large Magellanic Cloud (APOD 02/22/00)‏ 1.8x10 21 m away

Ordering Distance Objects Andromeda (APOD 03/14/04)‏ 2.9x10 22 m away

Ordering Distance Objects AGN 3C 273 7x10 25 m away

Ordering Distance Objects GRB (Gamma-ray Burst)‏ 1x10 26 m away

Powers of Ten Also check out this power point that zooms in and out by factors of 10 from the largest to smallest objects in the universe.

Graphing… How could we plot all these distances/sizes on the same scale? –If you used a detailed enough scale to show the small objects, your graph would go far into outer space. –If you used a large enough scale to fit all the larger distances, the small objects would pile on top of each other at zero.

Graphing… Solution: Use a logarithmic scale…

Activity Log Scale Activity –Cut out and paste the Distance Tabs onto the Log Scale (pg 14 in Tops Guide) –We won’t do this activity today, but it is there for you in the activity book – with answer keys…

Toilet Paper model of the Solar System Extension: Add planets; on this scale Jupiter would be 1/60 the size of a sheet of TP. Pluto is included, but is part of Kuiper Belt, not a planet. Several variations of this activity are on my website.

Walk to the Centre of the Earth Coming soon

The TOPS Guide This book (worth $20 US, free to you) is organised into 3-stand-alone sections: –A: A1: Orders of Magnitude A2: Unit Analysis (stacks of money)‏ –B: B1: Ordering Distance – Sticky and Cutout (what we did) B2: Using a Log Scale (what we discussed)‏ –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 specific classrooms? Where would scientific notation be useful? Where would logarithms be useful? How can we adapt for different ability levels? Or different learning needs?

“Scale the Universe” GLAST/Fermi Education and Public Mission Website: More great material from TOPS: My webpage: