[meteorite-list] Meteorite Talk/Program Topics

From: Matson, Robert <ROBERT.D.MATSON_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Mar 21 13:24:59 2005
Message-ID: <AF564D2B9D91D411B9FE00508BF1C86904EE651B_at_US-Torrance.mail.saic.com>

Hi Al, Bob and List,

On the subject of giving talks to the public on meteorites,
Bob wrote:

> ... thanks for reminding me that it may be better to
> focus on only one aspect of our avocation, as opposed
> to "shot-gunning" the audience with a topic such as:
> "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Meteorites".

Last Friday I took a day off from work and drove up to Ojai
to give an astronomy talk to about 50 Girl Scouts (Juniors)
and a dozen of their parents/troop leaders. As this talk
was meant to cover a sufficient number of topics for the
girls to earn their astronomy badges, it was necessarily
broad.

However, as bad luck would have it, it was completely socked
in last Friday night, so most of my preparations for covering
the Moon, planets, stars, asteroids, comets, planetary nebulae
and galaxies ended up being for naught. I shifted gears and
gave the talk indoors inside a large group cabin, with all the
scouts on their cots/sleeping bags. Basically a huge slumber
party!

I had printed up a bunch of star charts to hand out that were
specific to that night's viewing (though applicable for the
next month or so, ignoring the Moon and planet motions), so
they could at least learn the basics of reading a star chart,
and use one to learn a few constellations, star names, and
so forth. The girls showed a lot of interest and asked
surprisingly good questions given their ages (~9-11).

Several weeks earlier I purchased over a kilo of ordinary
chondrites from Dean Bessey (many of them NWA 869) with the
initial intent of giving them out as prizes for answering
questions or asking good ones. But Dean was very generous
and I ended up with more material than I expected -- enough
that every scout could have their own meteorite if I cut
the majority of them in half. So I fired up the saw and
cut ~50 specimens (which reminds me that I think I need a
new saw blade now!), weighed each one and made labels for
all of them.

When we got to the subject of asteroids, it was a natural
transition point to explaining about meteoroids, meteors and
meteorites. You should have seen those girls' faces light up
when they learned that they would each be going home with their
very own meteorite! I handed a bunch around for the scouts to
inspect (along with a rare earth magnet) while I continued
talking, and then the questions started coming fast and
furious -- how old are they? Where are they from? Who found
them? How do you know they're meteorites? Where are meteorites
found? Do all meteorites look like this? What are the
different types? Which ones are the rarest? How many have you
found? Where do you hunt for them? How do we hunt for them?
Are they hot when they land? How often do they fall? And
on and on...

I eventually moved on to other subjects (Deep Impact, the Mars
Rovers, different star types, the Milky Way, the Andromeda
Galaxy, etc.), but every few minutes a new question about
meteorites would pop up. Clearly the hands-on approach to
astronomy has a big impact on interest level.

Anyway, it was a great experience for me as I was very encouraged
by the high interest -- both from the scouts AND their mothers.
(Quite a few of the moms came up to thank me afterward and tell
me how much they had learned, which meant a lot to me.) In
retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise that it was cloudy as
there is no way I would have had time to cover all the topics that
I had originally planned, and the scouts probably ended up asking
a lot more questions the way it turned out.

--Rob
Received on Fri 18 Mar 2005 05:22:34 PM PST