Location: Adler Planetarium
Date: Thursday, January 21, 2016; 5:30-10:00
pm
Today’s topic was “First
Contact”, meaning it was all things "aliens".
Jola had sent us some reading materials and ‘Peggy Norbert Nature Museum’ was going to be in the house with
some interesting creatures, including something called “Targardis”, a truly disgusting creature. Then she sent out another communication,
saying that they were backordered and so we wouldn’t have them. Backordered.
What are they, ‘iPhone’! I arrived and after chatting with my fellow
volunteers in the classroom for a bit, we left for a walking tour of the
activities. We were also given a list
for “scavenger hunt”, including some
key words with which to respond when people say key phrases like “ET Phone Home” or “KHAAAN”. Something similar
to what we had done before. There were
also some simultaneous equations and we had answers to that! Excellent.
Let’s make the guests do some Algebra after a few drinks. Worked well for me in school!
 |
| "The Drake Equation" |
Our first stop was to see the “Planet Pursuit” experiment where we were demonstrating how “Exo-Planets” are detected, with light
sensor in front of a bulb and a device measuring the readout when an object
like a planet passes in front of it.
Next, we went and saw the room where guests would be making “UFOs” and then upstairs to see the
station where the “Drake Equation”
activity was taking place. There were “iPads” where guests would enter their
numbers for each of the 6 variables in the equation and it would calculate the
probability of finding “intelligent life”
in our galaxy. Our last stop was “Aliens Amongst Us”, which was in the “PXP Classroom”. This is where the ‘Peggy Nortbert Museum’ folks were
stationed and they had bought with them some interesting creatures, including a
scorpion, some things like cockroaches as well as some other disgusting
things. Besides that, in this room we
had some microscopes and slides with “Protozoa”,
as well as one that was being projected on the wall, where they would be seen
as giant slithering worm like things!
There was also a model of the infamous “Targardis” and looking at that I couldn’t imagine why anyone would
want that thing so as to be backordered.
This location was also my first stop at 6 pm and so I stayed
back as the rest left. It was early and there
was no one in the room, so I chatted with the girl from the “Nature Museum” and learned that like
Adler, they too have an “After Dark”
event. One guest came in and I welcomed
them to take a look at the slides, and the other creatures. We also had a provision to make a slide with
yeast and I said that my aversion to biology in school meant the guest would
have to make their own, which they did. We
also had some cards with weird looking creatures and out of the 20 cards, 3
were fake. I was asking the visitors to
guess and almost all of them failed.
There was a blue frog that was fake and I certainly wouldn’t have
guessed that.
Many called the model of “Targardis”
cute, though I would have never said that.
I would point out how this creature could survive the “hottest of hots” and “coldest of colds” and have also been in
space and survived the radiations therein.
This was one of the reasons why we were displaying that this
evening. As people would come, I would
encourage them to see the yeast slide and then ask that if yeast were living
creatures, should vegetarians be allowed to eat any bread products! This would get the guests to think, though
one lady said that as long as creatures have no "central nervous system", they do
not feel pain and so it was okay. “Easy for us to say”, I replied.
At 7 pm I went to my next station, which was “Drake Equation”. There was a big crowd there and a white board
was recording everyone’s answers. The
idea was to do an average at the end, getting a “crowd sourced” number. I
took over and since all the “iPads”
were being used, I would ask questions to guests and enter using a keyboard, and
they could watch the responses on a TV screen behind me. The questions started off by asking (1) how many starts were formed each year:
1-20, (2) How many had planets: 40-100%, (3) How many could sustain life:
0.001-4, (4) how many actually developed life: 1-100%, (5) How many developed
civilizations that transmitted signals in space: 0-50% and finally (6) How many years had they been
transmitting the: 0-100000.
It was fun to engage people and answers ranged from very
optimistic 20,000 to 0, meaning there were no intelligent species in our galaxy
besides us! I would guide people as
well, for example at the question on “intelligence”,
I would say that cats and dogs were intelligent, though they did not
communicate much with alien species – though I had seen a movie called “Cat From Outer Space” many years ago. People had a lot of fun doing this as did I
interacting with them. Some of them were
trying to manipulate their answers so as not to get zero while some wanted to
get answers close to the current average.
My fellow volunteer, Bob, mentioned that Prof Francis Drake’s – the man
who invented the equation - niece was here this evening and I said that I hoped
to meet her. For people who got zero, I would ask that if we were alone in our
galaxy, how many life forms were there in the Universe. They would say one and I would follow-up by saying
that if there are millions of galaxies and if each had just one “intelligent species”, there would still
be millions of civilizations out there – the exact premise of this equation.
At 8 pm I went to my next station, “Planet Pursuit”, outside the “Atwood
Sphere”. There were several units on
the table to measure the readout from the light sensor and I quickly learned
how to use them. As people came over, I would
say that this was a demonstration on finding “Exo-Planets” and then would ask them if they knew what they were. Then I would tell them to turn the planets at
a constant rate while I collected the data.
They did that upon which I would show the data, which was a graph with pronounced
dips of different amplitudes. I would
ask them what the “peaks” and “valleys” in graphs usually meant – even
in other datasets like stock market or temperature – and suggest that a dip
means there is usually less of something, which in this case was the light
being collected. Then I would ask why
the amplitude was different and that was because of the different size of the spheres
on the roller and their distance from the light source. Plus another variable was the speed of
rotation, which was being controlled by the guests.
I would mention that this is how we study distant stars and
all those fancy pictures of “Exo-Planets”
are artist’s renderings since no one has actually photographed an “Exo-Planet”, only predicted using data
such as the one we had collected. One
group referred to “Spectroscopy” as
one of the mechanisms for telling us the chemical constituents on distant
planets and I said that it was true, relating to the “Smelly Space” experiment that I usually perform as “pocket science”. I said that the 3 main activities this
evening were related – this one telling us about “Exo-Planets”, the “Drake Equation”
about the number of alien species out there and then something like the “Targardis” showing us that life can
exist in extreme conditions. Some people
were also carrying their model “UFOs”
and it was fun to see the designs, though no one asked me questions regarding
the “Scavenger Hunt”.
My final stop at 9 pm was once again at “Aliens Amongst Us”. Michael
came over and told us to start wrapping up and clean. I waited for a few visitors to leave, though
they were busy taking pictures and once they did, I arranged all the microscopes
on one table and left. It had been a fun
evening and there was a lot of “real
science” on display today. People had
enjoyed themselves, as had I.
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