Good evening Rob and list,
really, like we ever could stop Bob V. (any Bob or Rob on the list actually) talking about meteorites! ;-)
Bob V.s passion is meteorites and he is so very fortunate and knowledgeable to have so much success in it!
I tried to educated students in a fifth grade two years ago and I had a great time and basically just covered the rough draft.
They really did enjoy holding the meteorites I passed around. Also the weight and putting on a magnet was just amazing to them how they were so heavy and being so attracted.
I still have to learn a lot more to be comfortable to give more lessons.
But I am going to. I always know more than the children! That is a plus!
It is very exciting for the children or adults I run into to hold a meteorite. I have several meteorite pendants that I wear all the time and whenever I meet someone new, I always make sure they will hold it in their hands.
Sternengruss, Moni
From: "Matson, Robert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Meteorite-list Meteoritecentral <[email protected]>
CC: Al Mitterling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,'Robert Verish' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [meteorite-list] Meteorite Talk/Program Topics
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 14:22:34 -0800
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
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