Date: October 21st, 2012
Title: Encore: Disney, Dr. Seuss and the World of Astronomy
Podcasters: Michelle Meyer, Jacqueline Dennis, and Micol Christopher
Organization: Mt. San Antonia College – www.mtsac.edu
This podcast has been aired on July 12, 2010
http://365daysofastronomy.org/2010/07/12/july-12th-disney-dr-seuss-and-the-world-of-astronomy/
Description: Two astronomy students look at the connections between popular culture and astronomy. First, Disney’s famous line: “When You Wish Upon a Star” is re-examined for its astronomical accuracy. Then, Dr. Seuss’s classic story “Horton Hears a Who” is re-envisioned into a look at our universe.
Bio: Michelle Meyer and Jacqueline Dennis are introductory astronomy students at Mt. San Antonio College, a 2-year public university located 30 miles east of Los Angeles, California. As a project this semester, they read and reported on 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts and finished the semester by writing their own original podcast. That work is presented here. Their professor is Dr. Micol Christopher, a tenured Professor of Astronomy at Mt. San Antonio College. He has a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology and has been teaching at Mt. San Antonio College full-time for 5 years.
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Transcript:
Micol: Hi! My name is Micol Christopher, and I am a professor of astronomy at Mt. San Antonio College, a two-year school in Walnut, California, about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. As part of their work this semester, students in my introductory astronomy classes have been reading and reporting on podcasts from the 365 Days of Astronomy website. Their culminating activity was to write their own podcast on any topic in astronomy that interested them. What you will hear today are the podcasts from two students, Michelle Meyer and Jacqueline Dennis, who reexamined a Disney classic and a Dr. Seuss story for their astronomical accuracy and significance. Hope you will enjoy!
Michelle: My name is Michelle Meyer and I have been attending Micol Christopher’s astronomy class here at Mt. SAC for about 3 months now and that’s pretty much where I have all of my astronomy knowledge. So, here’s my podcast!
So, I have been sitting in my very first astronomy class for nearly a semester now and I have learned many things. I’ve learned about the history of astronomy, had a quick intro into archaeoastronomy, learned about the planets in our solar system, learned about stars, the Doppler shift, what a redshift and blueshift mean. I even know all about the life cycle of a star that is similar to our Sun. Oh yeah, and I learned about constellations, including Ophiuchus, the newest member of the constellation “brat pack”, known as the signs of the zodiac. I can even find Polaris using the Big Dipper. But from everything I’ve learned this semester nothing stands out more to me than the fact that a very dear song from one of Disney’s classics is wrong! Yes, apparently shooting stars are not stars. The lyrics should read: “When you wish upon a meteor”. Somehow that doesn’t have the same ring. Be that as it may, that is what a shooting star actually is.
A meteor is a tiny rock, typically the size of your pinky, that rides in the wake of the orbit of whatever pinky it has broken off of. Another stark difference between the fantasy of lyric and the reality of…well…reality is that meteors are pretty predictable. I mean shoot, if it really worked, wishing on a star I mean, then all you would need to do is find out the next time Earth’s orbit is going to cross the orbit of a comet then…poof…you could have whatever your heart desired. It totally takes the magic out of the equation, right? What happened to good old Disney enchantment? Yeah…thought so.
All kidding aside, meteors are a pretty fascinating phenomenon. What we see and identify as a shooting star is actually the gases from the atmosphere heating up as a small rock hits it. This rock is nothing more than space debris called, conveniently enough, a meteoroid and can be part of a known cluster or simply a rogue piece of space rock. As the rock disintegrates the friction causes the temperature to rise just enough to cause a glow of sorts. And while this phenomenon clearly has nothing to do with magic or mystery, it is still something beautiful to behold. If you really want to see one it shouldn’t be too difficult since meteors will strike Earth’s atmosphere something like one every twenty minutes. So just go outside, bring a blanket, and maybe a sweetheart, and wait. You would have to be pretty unlucky not to see one. Or you can wait until Earth really does cross paths with a comet and see an entire meteor shower. And you wouldn’t have to wait too long for that either; in fact the next one, called the Perseids, will occur on August 11th.
So let’s not give Disney too much guff…I mean while they may have been totally wrong about wishing on stars, they did prepare the way for us to believe in the magic we can find when we look up at the stars. And who really expects cartoons to mimic real life anyways. Wait…what to you mean little red lizards can’t talk.
Jacqueline: Hello everyone, my name is Jacqueline Dennis and I am currently a full-time college student enrolled in Professor Christopher’s Astronomy 5 class. While taking Astronomy 5 I found everything about space very interesting, which honestly amazed me because I didn’t even want to take the class; I forced myself because of graduation requirements. Every day of class in Astronomy 5, I was fascinated by what has already been discovered, what we (humans) are in the process of discovering, missions taking place right now, and with what we will discover in the future as we and technology progress. We know so little about such a huge thing, which is hilarious because what we know so far seems like a whole lot. Right now, what we know I, personally consider the basics, that’s how little we know about this great big thing known as the Universe.
Dr. Seuss’ book, Horton Hears A Who! is about an elephant named Horton, who finds this little peck of dust, well to be more precise it looked like a cotton ball on a stick, nice, fluffy, and extremely tiny. Well, anyways Horton finds this peck of dust and swears he hears a noise come from within it. He tells his friends and other members of his herd about this noise, but they think he’s lost his mind. We find out in the book that this peck of dust is actually, believe it or not, a tiny planet. So, the book is about Horton’s quest to find someplace safe he could lay this peck of dust down in. Throughout his quest Horton becomes very good friends with the mayor of these creatures known as the Whos, who live on this tiny planet and we know that the mayor throughout the book just can’t believe there is something actually bigger than them out there.
This book completely reminds me of us and our Universe, we are this little planet in this huge solar system, this huge galaxy, heck, the Universe. This thought makes me laugh because to me, we as a people seem so smart and we have all these beliefs about where we come from and what else is out there, but what if we are the peck of dust floating around and what if there is something bigger than us living around us, but we can’t see them because they are so big. Curious thought right?! I mean imagine, we think the universe is so amazingly huge, but what if we aren’t as big as we think we are, we could possibly be this peck of dust with galaxies in it, floating around something way bigger. If we think we’re big imagine if we are this peck of dust, imagine how big other things can be. Yikes!!! Interesting, right?! I mean, you never know. Well, I just thought this was an interesting insight that had to be shared. I hope in a few years of research, discoveries will tell us more about our Universe and possibly answer this interesting thought. Well, I am done, but hopefully I gave you something to think about. Bye! Have a blessed day!
Micol: I hope that you have enjoyed these podcasts from my introductory astronomy students. You will hear more from some of my other students coming up on August 22nd and September 8th. Thanks! Have a great day!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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