Exoplanets: Teaching kids about Space! - Winston Wright Capstone

          All three of us have an interest in some branch of engineering, more specifically aerospace engineering which is very important in interstellar space science. We aim to gain a better/more in depth understanding of the engineering behind space science (i,e. an in depth look at the lunar landing module). A focus on astronomy gave us a well rounded introduction to the different areas of student we want to pursue after high school. In addition to astronomy we did a lesson oriented completely on Astrobiology which offers an extremely wide variety of sciences to be learned. We most focused on exoplanets (planets that exist outside of our solar system) and what type of technology it would take us to get there. We also focused on the actual term astrobiology, which is a the study of the evolution/future of life in the universe. While helping others who might have interest in some of the lessons we  taught, we also cultivated our own interest in the related sciences.          
           The mini-courses were comprised of both lectures and power-point presentations, with open discussion being the majority of the presentation. Each quarter we turned in a lesson plan to our advisor to show our topic for a certain week. Inquiry and research stem from us looking at real data from missions of the Apollo program, for example or us tracking the status of yet to be determined exoplanets by the Hubble or Kepler telescopes. Collaboration came directly from our interaction with each other and how we choose to present/teach each mini-course lesson. We also took suggestions on what topics want to be discussed the most. Presentation and reflection will both be prevalent in our  end of the year presentation via keynote or powerpoint.
Exoplanets

Comments