Cometary Tales Blog,Hands-On Science Chasing Comets: Notes for Project Leaders #2

Chasing Comets: Notes for Project Leaders #2

Chasing Comets

OK, we’re back for part 2.  Remember that our goal is to impart an intuitive, long-term understanding of how comet tails work.  I’ll give you an observation worksheet that students can use during the Comet Running game, but if time or attention-spans are too short for a worksheet, dispense with that element in favor of learning through movement and Socratic dialogue. (What? You think an engineer wouldn’t have read the Greek philosophers?)

If you have time and enough outdoor space for the “Game” version of this simulation, move right along to “Stage 2” now. The promise of a chance to make their own models is what will entice the students back to the classroom. Otherwise, save the great outdoor model for another time or place and move directly to “Stage 3,” building the individual models.

Stage 2: The Game

Chasing Comets

That’s One Big Comet

This is an outdoor game, and it works to best advantage with a nice BIG comet model. Four five-yard lengths of white fabric streamers attached to a single badminton shuttlecock (“birdie”) make our Comet Chase model. A playground ball or a soccer ball (around 8” in diameter) stands for the sun.   Sort the participants into groups of no more than five and no fewer than three, and move to the great outdoors. A grassy area is safest, because this game involves some complicated running; if you’re stuck with pavement, tone down the running to “jogging” and allow a little extra time.

Start by laying out the ground rules for the game. First, each group will get to play every role. There are three parts: being the sun, being the comet, and being observers back on Earth. Remind everyone of your local rules for behavior outside. It’s harder to listen to instructions out in the sunshine and fresh air!

Take a moment to review the lesson so far. Place the model Sun on the ground, at least ten yards away. Ask an adult helper or one of the students to stand about halfway between the class and the Sun and to hold the head of the comet

Chasing Comets

Large Comet Head With Coma

while you extend the tail’s long white streamers.   This model is much more evocative of the scale of a real comet, which has a tail tremendously longer than the diameter of its coma, or head—but it’s still not a scale model. Allow for some oohs and aahs, but move on to your query: which direction should the comet’s tail point? Don’t move yet; both you and your helper just stand in place.

Chasing Comets

Large Comet: Incoming or Outbound?

Don’t be concerned if it takes more than one answer to get the right one! Some may still want to know which way your comet is moving. But in a few moments, you should achieve the consensus that the tail should point towards the class and away from the sun.

Now, add the movement and ask everyone to call out which way for you to move. Ask your helper to start walking (slowly, please!) towards the sun and then to loop around the sun. You will need to move quickly to keep the comet’s tail pointing away from the sun. In fact, even if your helper cooperates by walking slowly, you will need to break into a run! As you run, if the students aren’t already hollering directions to you, tel them to keep reminding you which way to point the tail: away from the Sun!

Pause partway and while you catch your breath you can demo a technique for helping to align the tail while in motion. With your outside hand, hold the streamers. With your inside hand, point at the Sun. The tail-runners should always find that pointing at the Sun also means pointing at the comet’s head.

Now, it is finally the students’ turn. Run as many iterations as necessary to ensure that each group does each job at least once. For instance, for a class of 20, allow time to run the game at least four times.

The Comet Group: The comet group needs one Head and up to four Tail-Runners. Name the comet after the person who’s serving as the Head. Comets are always named according to the last name of the comet’s discoverer. So if you have Robin Williams as the comet’s head, then this will be Comet Williams. Getting the comet named after him/her may compensate for the fact that the “head” only gets to walk slowly around the sun.

Meanwhile, the tail-runners get to hold the ends of the tail streamers and run to keep the comet’s head between themselves and the Sun.  In the normal course, the “tail” group will tend to lag a little and spread out, but that actually serves to more-accurately represent the shape of the dust tail. If you’re working with a two-tails group, designate one especially determined runner to represent the ion tail by taking one ribbon and maintaining a straight line from the ribbon end through the comet head to the sun.

The Sun Group: The sun group stands in the middle of your running space. One or two group members hold the model sun overhead. This makes it easier for the Comet group to see if they have successfully aligned the comet head and the sun. If the tail-runners stray out of line, members of the sun group need to to shout out “Got you! Got you!” or “Solar Wind Coming!” to warn them that the solar forces are blasting the tail.

The Astronomer Group: The people who are not part of the sun-comet demonstration still have a critical role. They are not just watching other people play the game, but they are tracking the shape of the comet’s tail as it passes around the sun, as observers on Earth. Depending on their perspective at each point in the comet’s orbit, the tail will appear longer or shorter. For example, if the comet is roughly between Earth and the Sun, the tail may look short, because it is stretched towards us. If you have time for writing, ask the Observers to sketch the comet as they see it. (See the handout.) In an average class, each student will get to observe the comet at least twice, which is very helpful for catching the unexpected views.

When every group has had a chance to play every role, take a few minutes to review one more time. As a comet is orbiting around the sun, which way does its tail point? By now, everyone should be willing to state that the tail always points away from the sun.

Still, you may still have a few hold-outs who are not quite sure this can be true. If you are lucky and it’s a sunny day, you have a hole card to play. Invite the students to each imagine that they are comets. “Guess what? You can see exactly where your tail would be. Who can point at it? Where’s your tail, Comet Human?”

If you are not saved by the insight of a student who’s totally absorbed the lesson, it is OK to resort to hints. “Everyone has one. It’s easy to see. Yes, you can see your comet tail! Where is it? Which way does a comet’s tail point? Right: away from the sun. Where’s the sun right now? What do you have that’s pointing away from the sun? It’s not bright and shiny like a comet’s tail. It’s dark, because there are no sunbeams there.

“Yes! Your shadow is your comet tail. It points away from the sun, always, no matter what direction you run.”

Stage 3: The Reward

Finally, everyone needs a model comet of their own to take home and show off and share with family members everything about how comet tails work. This is not an art project; it’s an opportunity to review and experiment individually. If some students are fussy about carefully arranging their streamers to make a colorful pattern, that is all right, but the point is to assemble a working model.

Each participant needs 24 feet of curling ribbon and a birdie (remember what I told you earlier about calling it by its proper name—be prepared for lots of giggling and teasing if you insist on that) . Cut the ribbon into eight lengths of roughly 3 feet. It is perfectly all right—and in fact more realistic—if the streamers come out various lengths. And depending on the students’ social skills, it is also all right for them to exchange colors once the cutting is done. (There are always some who prefer to discover a multi-color comet and others who prefer monotone.)

Once each student has six streamers, have them tie one end of each streamer to the head of the birdie.

Chasing Comets

Detail–Attaching Ribbon For Comet Tail

Your meticulous planners will distribute them evenly around the netting; others will be clumped randomly. Either is fine. Every comet is unique and most are quite non-uniform.

Be real. This project is not done when it the comets have been only built. Everyone needs a chance to try them out. They will, of course, want to toss them around the classroom; if this is not acceptable, make some provision for them to try out that technique outdoors. More scientific, of course, as time permits, is to allow the participants to take turns trying out their comets in the pretend “solar wind” of the classroom fan. As long as they willing and able to mind safety rules about working around a fan, by all means have everyone try out the tail position approaching, passing, and retreating from the Fan Sun. But don’t get all hot under the collar if other comets are flying through the room while you monitor the fan users. Just imagine you’re in the Oort Cloud and you’ll be OK.

Up next:  Supplies You Need and Resources You Can Use

Chasing Comets

A Cluster of Comets, Incoming & Outbound

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Convention Time is a-Coming, Ha-HaConvention Time is a-Coming, Ha-Ha

I’m all kinds of happy about convention time this year. It makes up for a lot of crummy stuff that happened in my little world in the first third of 2018.

BayCon programming liked some of my program ideas.  They even put some of them on the program! Even better, though a little scarier, they plunked me down as a panel member on two of them and asked me to moderate a third.  I’m getting better at this panel thing, though.  I’ve discovered I do have a few things to say, and I have managed to steer a group around to keep the panel on track or at least bring the quietest panelist back into the conversation.  I’m solidly on science track this year, so I will make sure to brush up on my Real Facts before I show up.

Here’s my schedule, just in case anyone’s looking for me.  Or at least so I have a place I can look this stuff up, myself:

What?Who?
Sunday, May 27 at 1 pm
Science and Politics in the USA: Latter Day Lysenkoism?

Can US science recover from the anti-science policies of politicians? Where will the damage be most significant?
Edward Kukla
(educator, biologist, mathematician, a moderator who knows how to make Ph.D.’s behave themselves)
Bradford Lyau, Ph.D.
(historian, political activist, literary analyst)
Vanessa MacLaren-Wray, Ph.D.
(science activist, writer, engineer)
Howard Davidson, Ph.D.
(turns science fiction into real-world stuff)
Sunday, May 27 at 4 pm
Bad Science: Pseudoscience, Hoaxes, and Illogical Thinking

When we’re reading or writing science fiction, we’ve got some poetic license, but we want the science to be fundamentally right.
When looking for science resources, how do we winnow the chaff from the wheat?
As a bonus, really bad science and hoaxers provide excellent fodder for parody SF.
(I’m a big fan of Phil Plait, whose “Bad Astronomy ” column is a good example of this kind of thinking.)
Vanessa MacLaren-Wray, Ph.D.
(writer, mechanical engineer, writer, used to managing a roomful of smart guys)
Howard Davidson, Ph.D.
(physicist, inventor)
Arthur Bozlee
(aerospace entrepeneur, oughta have a Ph.D., should hire the rest of us)
Jim Doty, Ph.D.
(writer, electrical engineer)
Monday, May 28 at 11:30 am
Wild Weather

For the first time, science can show
that three extreme weather events would not have happened without global warming,
including the rain bomb that drowned Houston.
We’re also seeing tropical cyclones cross into the Bering Sea,
and cold snaps bringing snow to the deep south.
What can we expect to happen with tornadoes?
Patricia MacEwen
(writer, physical anthropologist who also uses her knowledge for our kind of stories, all-around awesome person)
Vanessa MacLaren-Wray, Ph.D.
(writer, engineer working on energy efficiency to fight climate change)
Heidi Stauffer, Ph.D.
(real-life educator and environmental geologist, i.e., this stuff is her field exactly)

My BayCon program schedule has some holes in it, so I plan to take some time and scoot down to Fanime that same weekend.  I love the costumes, and I’ve lately acquired a taste for Japanese pop music, and have even watched some of the anime (especially, of course, the science fiction) that rolls through on Netflix.  I have an in-house anime expert who can give me insider tips so I don’t have to watch everything to find what I’ll like.

WorldCon is in San Jose this year!  I am so stoked!  I submitted some program ideas to that group as well, though haven’t had any feedback from them.  Though I don’t expect to actually be on program, if they use any of my ideas I will be sure to go around claiming credit for them.  I’m finally paid up on my membership (thank heavens for installment plans).  My last WorldCon was in Spokane, and that trip was super-fun, but it kind of broke the family bank.  With the con in San Jose, it’s an easy daily commute.  Niiiiice.

Al Gore sitting with Angie Coiro on a stage with a screen behind them and cups on a table in between their chairs. Angie is holding her laptop computer as she listens to Al answer a question.
Climate science advocacy up close and personal. (Al Gore and Angie Coiro, December 7, 2017)

Al Gore won’t be coming to BayCon, but we’ll do our best to cover for him.

A cylindrical spacecraft with long solar panels spreading out on both sides.

The names in “All That Was Asked”The names in “All That Was Asked”

In my previous post, I tried to explain how all those odd names ended up in my recently-published book and why I think it’s fun to play around with languages in the middle of a story.

So, what if you don’t really care about all that linquistic nonsense, but just want a guide to pronouncing stuff in this particular story?  In what follows, I’m going to share what I’ve prepared for the person doing our audio book.  On the surface, it may look daunting, but, really, it all hangs together with a few key elements:

Sensei, in Kanji
Source: japanesewithanime.com 
(CC BY-SA 4.0)
  • Lots of the names end in a shortened “ay” sound I’ve tagged here as ei. It sounds almost like a long ay, but is cut short like you were going to pronounce a “y” on the end, but stopped yourself just in time, “say” without that teensy “eeya” sound that wraps up that word. Sort of like “sensei” as pronounced in Japan, or at least in anime and Japanese TV shows.
  • In names ending in e, the final e is always sounded–usually as that shortened “ay” sound.
  • The exception is “ere”, which is ayr-ee, wherever it happens to fall, so some names end with ayr-ee, while some have that in the middle or at the beginning.
  • Children (or adults being teased as if they are children) or intimate friends get their names shortened with a bit of a stop in the middle, so Ansegwe becomes An-s-wei, and Kantalare becomes K-a-la-rei
  • As an example of the “translated words” system: the “aunts” are “awnts”, Brit/Northeast/Southern style, rather than Midwestern style “ants”.

Digression: How come I like weird names?  Well, jeepers, I’ve got one of my own, one that often gets pronounced weird, though I don’t care, really, I’ve heard ’em all.  The “correct” way is va-‘ness-uh ma-‘cla-ren-‘ray.  There are other pronunciations in use . . . but those are other Vanessas and other MacLarens. 

OK, here we go.  I’m not using really formal linguistic notation, but sound-shorthand that I think we all can follow. I put a single quote at the front of the stressed syllable in each word. 

  1. Our Main Characters

Varayla Ansegwe, Eskenyan Jemenga, Ensense Kantalare, Varaylas Ansele and Adeleke, and Haillyen.  These all appear frequently, though it takes a while for Kantalare to show up.  See how what we call “last names” (family names) come first, and “first names” (personal names) come second.

Wary, indeed.
Photo of sketch on wall, by Quinn Dombrowski, Berkeley, CA (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Varayla: Va-‘ray-la This one’s pretty phonetic, the tricky thing, from listening to auditions for our audio book, is that some people seem to read the “yla” as “lya”.  This reminds me of how people read the second half of my last name as “Wary” instead of “Wray”.  Don’t let it worry you, but if you prefer mispronouncing Varayla, just don’t go to Korlo. In the bad old days, you could earn a set of cement overshoes for mispronouncing that name to the wrong person.

Ansegwe: ‘ahn-seg-wei Our hero’s name is most likely to be mispronounced as on-‘seg-way, which is hilarious, as it makes me picture this enormous klutz trying to ride a Segway.  The first syllable should be said relatively slowly, so the second two click together fast, so that you almost lose the sound of the “e” in the middle: ahns’gwei. It has a kind of Japanese flavor to it.

Eskenyan: ess-‘ken-yan It sounds sort of like “a person from Kenya” (at least the way Americans say it) plus “Ess” in front of it.

Jemenga: ja-‘meng-uh When Jemenga is particularly pleased with himself, he really hits that middle syllable, so it’s like Ja-MENG-ah!

The Varayla Syndicate’s above-board operations include space-based solar power satellites.
(Not quite like this. This is NASA’s Solar-b satellite)

Ansele: ‘ahn-se-lei Tycoon aunt #1.

Adeleke: a-‘del-e-kei Tycoon aunt #2.

Haillyen: ‘hay-ul-lee-yen This is a “foreign” word to Ansegwe, so he’s basically phonetically “translated” it, the ‘y’ in the last syllable is a  bridge sound you get when putting ee and en together between the ee and the en.  Do ya get it? Yeah?  The reader should get it about 100 pages before Ansegwe catches on.

Ensense: en-‘sens-ei  You know, like, “sensei” with an “en” at the front.

Kantalare: kahn-tah-‘lahr-ei There’s a secondary stress on the first syllable.  Just make it sound pretty in your head.  Ansegwe is totally in love with her, so, whatever, hear her as beautiful

2. The people on the expedition

Some of these folks are only mentioned or quoted during the “expedition” chapters.

Tkonle: t-‘kawn-lei

Kulandere: koo-lahn-‘dayr-ee

Tekere: ta-‘kayr-ee

Tereinse: ‘tayr-ee-in-sei

Alekwa: ah-‘leek-wah

Nara: ‘nah-rah

Ensargen: en-‘sahr-gen It’s a hard g, as in “gun”, not a soft one as in “generation”. They don’t really use hard “g”

Korton: ‘kor-tun

Alawere: ah-la-‘wayr-ee

Tasegion: tah-‘seg-ee-on

Turame: too-‘rah-mei

3. People at home

Kateseo: ka-‘tay-see-oh

Kinshada: kin-‘shah-dah

Tumbal: ‘toom-bal

Erekulu: ayr-ee-‘koo-loo OK, this one isn’t a person, he’s a domesticated animal, so his name is a little goofy, meant to sound cute.

Tokal: toh-‘kahl

Ans’we: ‘ahn-se-wei This is a nickname for Ansegwe, used mostly by Kantalare, but also used by his expedition “friends” when they want to get on his case.

K’alare-: kah-‘lahr-ei This is a nickname for Kantalare, used by Ansegwe.

Az-dyel: ahz-dee-‘ell Note that this is another “foreign” word that Ansegwe has transcribed this way, so it’s pretty phonetic, the three syllables have almost equal stress, I hear just a little more on the last one, but you can feel more free to mess around with this one–it’s the ONLY word in this language that appears at all.

Eskewere: ess-ke-wayr-ee

Ensense Halense: en-‘sen-sei hah-‘len-sei This is a member of Kantalare’s extended family that they happen to run into at some point. 

4. List of authors. 

About two-thirds of the way through, someone gives Ansegwe a reading list, and the authors of the books are a mix of people from his world, one from outside his culture, and one (the last) he’s going to spend a lot of time with. I wouldn’t worry about these too much, but have fun with them.  Yeah, uh-huh, that’s intentional.

Asvelan Kulumbu: ‘ahs-veh-lahn  koo-‘loom-boo

Palawan Vejr: ‘pah-lah-wahn  vee-‘yay-zher

Trjia Qwijlian: ‘trr-zhee-ah  ‘kwizh-lee-ahn

Tsulander Tkonle: ‘Tzoo-lahn-der  T’kawn-lei

5. People in quotes.

Yeah, this is one of those books where each chapter opens with a quote from someone.  I picture these as remarks that people who know Ansegwe have made when interviewed about the events in the story.  Picture them sitting across the desk on their version of The Daily Show, chatting with their Trevor Noah.  Most of the quoted individuals made it into the final.  A few only get mentioned in these quotes.  These ones are mostly government officials.  Make them sound stuffy, self-important, and less-than-competent.

Insake Hailaware: ‘in-sah-kei  hai-uh-la-‘wahr-ei (For fussiness, there’s a secondary stress on first syllable in Hailaware. He will get all huffy if you miss that and maybe will find some minor infraction to write you up for.)

Elesennen Haileski: el-es-‘sen-en  hai-uh-‘les-kee

Kinsala Tkerelon: kin-‘sah-lah  T-‘kayr-ee-lon

6. Other words and place names.

The story takes place in a fairly limited set of “alien” geographic locations.  But I do have some place names included and there are a few other “thing” words that appear more than once.

The Kalinidor is something like this.
Alexander Fleming’s Nobel Prize (1945)
(Jemenga would discover penicillin if someone else hadn’t already.) Source: Science and Society Picture Library, London Museum of Science (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Korlo: ‘kor-low It simply sounds like “core” “low”.  This is Ansegwe’s country. 

Kalinidor: ka-‘lin-ee-dor This is a person’s name that’s become an object name–sort of like the Nobel Prize, well, actually, exactly like the Nobel prize.  Jemenga really really wants one of these.

Quazwallade: kwaz-‘wall-ah-dei  This is a place name, just a foreign country, one with some technological and cultural differences from Korlo.

Cignali: sig-‘nah-lee Let’s say that probably this was originally a person’s name, but now it’s the name of a famous university, think “Stanford”.

Utumwe: oo-‘tum-wei I told you there were academics in this story.  This is another university, a medical school actually, one that Jemenga lectures at, when they can get him.

Terende: ta-‘ren-dei  Another place name.

Tule: ‘too-lei Yep, place name. Doesn’t get much play, but even minor places count, says the writer who lives in a town that isn’t a proper town, just a collection of farms, houses, shops, and a gas station, that gets its own post office.

Monday at BayCon 2013Monday at BayCon 2013

There are fewer options on the final day, and the available time is short, so opportunities for plans to stray from reality are fewer.  We’d expect less divergence…here are the results of our field test:

Time Frame What the Plan was What really happened
Monday morning Sleep in a bit, then go to session on James Bond vs Dr Who, and finally pick up art if I win any auctions.

One of Patricia McCracken's Little Dragons came home with me!  Find your own here http://www.patriciamccracken.com/miniprint.html

One of Patricia McCracken’s Little Dragons came home with me! Find your own here .

Did sleep in.  Fed horses & scooped manure, too.  Didn’t arrive until close to noon.Trekked to the Art Show first to pick up the two pieces I’d bought, but then also discovered my single bid on the dragon-butterfly print was the winning bid.  So paid and went to look for that panel talk.  JB vs DW still ongoing, but after a half-hour I figured I’d had about all I needed on the topic.  So no regrets about turning up so late. 

My next move was to get my art safely into the car, though I did make a detour to make sure there was no boffering available today.  Dang.  Just another panel talk going on in what had been Boffer Central.

 

So I betook myself down to the Gaming Room to buy a coke and eat lunch.  Two older teenagers who had joined in on the dancing last night were there playing some form of D&D.  The one thing I haven’t done at this convention is play games, and it looks like that will have to be another time.  For now, I just have to settle for having spent some time hanging out in the Gaming Room.

Monday afternoon Go to session on “how to build a spaceship.”  Go home!

First firing of the Falcon 9-R advanced prototype rocket. Via Elon Musk on Twitter. Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/102692/spacex-tests-falcon-9-r-advanced-reusable-prototype-rocket/#ixzz2WVt42LYG

First firing of the Falcon 9-R advanced prototype rocket. Via Elon Musk on Twitter.   At least there is a good place to read about the topic I skipped:  start here.

 

MKB's latest novel in the Star Wars universe

MKB’s latest novel in the Star Wars universe

 

 

California Autism Foundation

California Autism Foundation

 

diy

 

 

 

 

 

It was easier to walk to the media tie-in panel from the Gaming Room, so that’s where I went.   I hadn’t actually looked at the list of panelist, so it was a pleasing surprise to see Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff  there, in her capacity as a leading author in Star Wars novels.  Her panel partner, Kevin Andrew Murphy, works also in gaming tie-ins and had a much more positive spin on the quality of that literature than the board-game guy in yesterday’s panel.  Overall, I gained a much better picture of life as a tie-in fiction author.  And an appreciation for authors who can face intense fans in the middle of a panel.    Btw, about half the people in the audience are people I recognize.So things were winding down, including the dealer’s room.  So I went on up to the closing ceremonies.  In between that and the “hiss and purr” session, there was some dead time.  I poked my head into the Art Room to see how the art auction had wrapped up.  One of the women I remember from dancing last night was clutching the steampunk flamingo.  Turns out it hadn’t had any bids, so the artist had offered it to her at a lesser price in order to avoid hauling it home.  Good for her! 

Next stop:  the Gaming Room, for one last donation to the California Autism Foundation (the beneficiary of the Charity Vending machine) from which I gained a Coke for myself and an accidentally-vended ginger ale which I could donate to one of the nearby volunteers.

 

I was determined to stay for the critique session because I wanted to praise the DIY idea.  The downside was having to sit through a huge laundry list of facility complaints and an equally lengthy recitation of praises for hotel staff.  However, managed to retain my nerve enough to actually participate in the “programming” discussion.

 

After that subject was concluded, I took off for Nob Hill.  Not the SF landmark, the grocery store.  Got home before the guys and even fixed dinner for everyone.  Does tacos count as dinner?

 

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