When thinking of the weather, it’s often the same – cloudy, sunny, maybe a chance of rain. A different type of weather, however, impacts our lives in ways we rarely consider: Space weather. As the seasons change, events in our solar system impact us – and could potentially hinder us – every single day.
Space storms could hinder our telecommunications systems on Earth, as well as endanger airliners and astronauts in space. As our dependence on technology advances, so should our understanding of these cosmic events. Amy Keesee, research assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy West Virginia University, has helped develop a Sun and Space Weather Kit workshop to educate middle school and high school students about such events.
“Any science education has two goals,” Keesee said. “One is to get some kids interested in pursuing a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), but also educating students that don’t pursue those careers that they need to have an understanding of science.”
The project was built on NASA’s existing Space Weather Action Center website, which has tools that help schools create video bulletins about space weather. With the assistance of Todd Ensign of the NASA IV&V Education Resource Center in Fairmont, West Virginia, Keesee helped create a kit full of technology that schools could be trained to use and check-out for periods at a time.
By providing the equipment free of charge to schools, it removes financial barriers often encountered in schools. The $12,000 value of the kit is available to check-out for free, Keesee said.
“We provide everything they would need to implement this information in their classroom, including training,” Keesee said. The kit currently includes a classroom set of iPads, solar viewing telescopes that enable safe viewing of the sun, and other equipment.
Teachers and students then use the same data available to NASA scientists to construct their weather reports, getting a hands-on experience with real-world data.
“You’re accessing real data that the scientists use through the iPads,” Keesee said. “So they (students) feel like they’re really a scientist instead of just reading about or hearing about it. They’re doing it themselves.”
Students are also able to pose questions to Keesee and other scientists, using the iPad’s videoconferencing capabilities.
Carol Coryea, an instructor in the Paw Paw school system in Morgan County, West Virginia, incorporated the kit into her curriculum after attending the first week-long workshop that was offered. Since then, her students have created weather forecast videos and have even constructed a full-scale model of the Magnetospheric Multi-Scale (MMS) mission satellite.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will be displaying the model for two large events this summer, including the center’s “Goddard Day” exhibition Sept. 26. Approximately 12,000 visitors will be able to see the students’ model on display. It will then move to Charleston, West Virginia’s Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences.
Keesee, Ensign, and Coryea co-authored an article describing the kit and its implementation in the classroom. The article appears in the Spring issue of The Earth Scientist, the peer-reviewed journal of the National Earth Science Teachers Association. The article is open-access and can be viewed here: http://www.nestanet.org/cms/sites/default/files/journal/Keesee_TES_Spr2015_separate.pdf
Getting students interested and aware of the importance of science is essential in an education, Keesee said. Even if a career in the sciences is not pursued, understanding the process and research can inform everything from voting to purchasing everyday products.
“Any citizen of the world needs to have some inkling of science and how science research is done,” Keesee said. “When there’s an exciting subject like this it makes everyone an informed citizen.”
-WVU-
dr/07/02/2015
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