“Scale the Universe”

Exploring your Universe from

Inner to Outer Space

Presented by: Teena Della

NASA’s Educator AmbassadorTeacher 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)• 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?

• 1st 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 101, 102, 103, 106, 109, and 1012 in green  (Or more numbers10-1, 10-2, 10-3, and 10-4 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 100, 2 x 101, 2 x 102 and 2 x 10-2.See my webpage for full instructions www.fermiepo.wikispaces.com

Scientific Notation and Tens

10000 = 1x 104

1000= 1x 103

100 = 1x 102

10 = 1x 101

1 = 1x 100

0.1 = 1x 10-1

0.01 = 1x 10-2

0.001 = 1x 10-3

0.0001 = 1x 10-4

How this works:

Powers of Ten

• $100 bill is 0.1mm thickThen a Stack of $1000 (10x$100 bills) =

1mm thickStack of $10,000 (100x$100 bills)=

1cm thickStack of $100,000 (1000x$100 bills)=

10cm thickStack of $1 million (10,000x$100 bills) =

1m thickStack 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):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQSGnWuHzdk

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 Helix2x10-9 m

Ordering Distance Objects

“Average Virus”7.5x10-8 m

Ordering Distance Objects

“Average Bacterium”2x10-6 m

Ordering Distance Objects

Height of “Average” Human1.7x100 m

Ordering Distance Objects

Mount Everest(http://peace.sandiego.edu/images/programs/Mount%20Everest.jpg)

8.85x103 m

Ordering Distance Objects

Fermi Orbital distance above Earth’s Surface

5.5x105 m

Ordering Distance Objects

Moon Radius(www.noao.edu/image_gallery/ images/d4/moon.jpg)

1.74x106 m

Ordering Distance Objects

Moon’s Orbital Radius & Sun3.84x108 m

Ordering Distance Objects

Earth Orbital Radius1.5x1011 m

Ordering Distance Objects

Pluto Orbital Radius5.9x1012 m

Ordering Distance Objects

HD70642(Sun-like star with Jupiter-like planet)

9.4x1017 m

Ordering Distance Objects

Crab Pulsar7x1019 m

Ordering Distance Objects

Radius of the Milky Way(APOD 09/08/95)

5x1020 m

Ordering Distance Objects

LCM – Large Magellanic Cloud(APOD 02/22/00)

1.8x1021 m away

Ordering Distance Objects

Andromeda(APOD 03/14/04)

2.9x1022 m away

Ordering Distance Objects

AGN 3C 2737x1025 m away

Ordering Distance Objects

GRB990123(Gamma-ray Burst)

1x1026 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.

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10

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: http://glast.sonoma.edu

• More great material from TOPS: http://topscience.org/

• My webpage: http://fermiepo.wikispaces.com