Oh no ! Bad astronomy

[C6rrules]

My wife bought me a new phone case as it was astronomical.

Just amazed that these ideas still exist . They walk among us !

Nick

[PeterStudz]

Maybe it’s just “artistic”.

It reminds me of talking to a friends daughter (just about to go to University) who did not know what the Solar System is and did not know what galaxies were. There was confusion between “galaxy” and “universe”. Although she had zero interest, so I gave up! 

[Carbon Brush]

@PeterStudz As long as your friends daughter was going to study classical Greek poetry or something like that, no real problem.
If she was going to study anything remotely scientific🙄.

Once on holiday (Egypt diving) the evening conversation turned to the wonderful skies.
I was asked - what is the difference between a star and a planet.
Well they are both lights in the sky😁
 

[PeterStudz]

4 minutes ago, Carbon Brush said:

@PeterStudz As long as your friends daughter was going to study classical Greek poetry or something like that, no real problem.
If she was going to study anything remotely scientific🙄.

 

Politics & economics - I believe. Which given the state of these in recent years means that there’s probably no real problem 😀

[LaurenceT]

While on a walking trip with some friends years ago I had a very heated argument with one of them, a university professor, who absolutely insisted that the North Star was the brightest star in the sky.

In his defence we had just spent 4 hours in the pub!

[ollypenrice]

21 hours ago, Carbon Brush said:

@PeterStudz As long as your friends daughter was going to study classical Greek poetry or something like that, no real problem.
If she was going to study anything remotely scientific🙄.

I cannot agree. It would be impossible to study classical poetry in any depth whatever without an understanding of the worldview which informs the period's poetic imagery. Aristotle wrote about physics, as most on here will know, but his book The Poetics remains a definitive work on tragedy (the poetic art form) and was one of the first books I read as an English Lit undergraduate.

Indeed, many poetic genres draw heavily on the astronomical ideas of their time, perhaps most notably the English Metaphysical poets. The interaction between art and science is still thriving. You can, if you wish, choose to believe Dali's claim that his soft clocks painting was inspired by a conversation about the supersoftness of certain kinds of cheese but most people regard it as a response to the Einsteinian idea of malleable time.

Olly

Edited July 9 by ollypenrice
False click

[M40]

Reading the above reminded me, has anyone else got "the look" when you mention every star you can see is in our galaxy?

[ollypenrice]

20 minutes ago, M40 said:

Reading the above reminded me, has anyone else got "the look" when you mention every star you can see is in our galaxy?

No, I've always found people open to this idea. The fact that the moon can be hidden behind a pencil held at arm's length often gets 'the look,' though. 

Olly

[saac]

I get the look when I announce I need another telescope to see more stars  

Jim 

[Elp]

I get the look when I say I want to use my telescope and the fact I have one in the first place...

Edited July 9 by Elp

[M40]

11 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

The fact that the moon can be hidden behind a pencil held at arm's length often gets 'the look,' though. 

Oooh now that I am going to try, purely in the interests of scientific research of course 🤔

[Captain Scarlet]

59 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

No, I've always found people open to this idea. The fact that the moon can be hidden behind a pencil held at arm's length often gets 'the look,' though. 

Olly

That’s a very nice bit of counterintuitivity, I’m going to steal it. The Moon subtends very close to half a degree. Your little finger at arm’s length subtends about one degree. A pencil would be about half a little finger or more, so it rings true.

Edited July 9 by Captain Scarlet

[AstroMuni]

23 hours ago, PeterStudz said:

It reminds me of talking to a friends daughter (just about to go to University) who did not know what the Solar System is and did not know what galaxies were.

Its indeed a sad state of general knowledge (that should have been covered in school) 😞 

[Carbon Brush]

@AstroMuni But who does this in school? Here is an example of a pratt of a science teacher.

About 30 years ago my son was at the local secondary school. Science homework was to make a sundial.
Some made a paper cut out. But other materials were encourged.
I decided to help make something that would last and teach some practical skills.
An old copper hot water tank provided donor material. Then there is metal marking, cutting, working it flat, soldering the gnomon, etc.

During construction I was told that I had got it wrong. I had not taken much notice of the homework instructions.
My dial had 24 hour rotation. Sir the science teacher had handed out a 12 hour clock face type of idea.
After some (heated father-son) discussion my idea was accepted and in due course handed in.
Discussion among students showed 28 of 30 in the class had made a 12 hour sundial to Sirs instruction!

When the homework had been marked and returned, no comment was made about the gross incompetence showed by the teacher.
My my son was ill on the day of return and it was given to another pupil to pass on.

Later my son queried the homework with the teacher. Well actually he tried at least twice after lessons, but Sir was always in a rush to get somewhere.

When parents evening came around I collared the teacher. The conversation was something like.....
Me. My son made a 24h sundial, you set homework for a (stupidly wrong) 12h dial - why?
Sir. Not sure what you mean....
Me. OK stand in your garden at 6am, noon and 6pm. Where is the sun? In other words it goes around in 24 hours. Why do you think it looks like a 12 hour clock face?
Sir. I don't really know much about astronomy.
Me. It is not astronomy - it is about looking at the world around you - which should be second nature to a science teacher.
Sir. Let me get back to you.

As an aside. I knew this teacher from his previous job. Manager of a local leisure centre.
At the time, The Brittas Empire was on TV.
I could not help but make the link🤣

No offence intended to the many knowledgeable and competent science teachers (and leisure centre managers) who are out there.

[AstroMuni]

19 minutes ago, Carbon Brush said:

But who does this in school?

Its been a while since my kids were in school but surely they cover the solar system if not the universe. If not, its about time they did 🙂 

[Peter Drew]

I have often asked an audience how many stars can be seen with the naked eye on a clear dark night.  The truth is none.  They are so far away that only the light from them can be seen.  An analogy is being able to see the light from a torch several miles away but you can't see the torch.  So what you see is just where the stars are.  Or are they?  They will have changed position since the light started off.     🙂

[AstroMuni]

2 minutes ago, Peter Drew said:

An analogy is being able to see the light from a torch several miles away but you can't see the torch.

If schools are not explaining about our solar system I wouldnt expect this to be covered 😉 🤣

[ollypenrice]

I think we can be pretty sure that the solar system is taught in schools but what is absorbed and what is discarded is in the hands of the individual student. 

2 hours ago, Peter Drew said:

I have often asked an audience how many stars can be seen with the naked eye on a clear dark night.  The truth is none.  They are so far away that only the light from them can be seen.  An analogy is being able to see the light from a torch several miles away but you can't see the torch.  So what you see is just where the stars are.  Or are they?  They will have changed position since the light started off.     🙂

Interesting. I think there's a fundamental difference between seeing objects which are reflecting light from other sources and seeing light from light emitting objects. Reflected light contains, visually if not spectroscopically, much more information about the object. The obvious star to choose would be the sun, which we cannot see at all since we are blinded by its light.

Olly

[Gfamily]

2 hours ago, Peter Drew said:

I have often asked an audience how many stars can be seen with the naked eye on a clear dark night.  The truth is none.  They are so far away that only the light from them can be seen.  An analogy is being able to see the light from a torch several miles away but you can't see the torch.  So what you see is just where the stars are.  Or are they?  They will have changed position since the light started off.     🙂

Hmm, I refer you to this xkcd.

https://m.xkcd.com/169/

[pipnina]

1 hour ago, Gfamily said:

Hmm, I refer you to this xkcd.

https://m.xkcd.com/169/

I think XKCD's earlier art is a bit angrier than I anticipated...😅

[pipnina]

4 hours ago, Peter Drew said:

I have often asked an audience how many stars can be seen with the naked eye on a clear dark night.  The truth is none.  They are so far away that only the light from them can be seen.  An analogy is being able to see the light from a torch several miles away but you can't see the torch.  So what you see is just where the stars are.  Or are they?  They will have changed position since the light started off.     🙂

What I'm hearing here is that we should create a light source so bright, that we can illuminate the surface of the sun and find out what it really looks like? 😛

[saac]

4 hours ago, AstroMuni said:

Its been a while since my kids were in school but surely they cover the solar system if not the universe. If not, its about time they did 🙂 

Covered in both primary and secondary school at various different ages and stages. Then covered again at university for those who are interested and have the potential. 

Wow school is getting really crammed with all these things that should be taught in school. How about parents take a wee bit of the responsibility instead of passing the buck. Just a thought. 

Jim 

Edited July 9 by saac

[PeterStudz]

3 minutes ago, saac said:

Covered in both primary and secondary school at various different ages and stages. Then covered again at university for those who are interested and have the potential. 

Wow school is getting really crammed with all these things that should be taught in school. How about parent  take a wee bit of the responsibility instead of passing the buck. Just a thought. 

Jim 

My daughter, Alice, is 13 next month. She tells me that at school she did something about the solar system & planets when she was about 10. Just a few lessons according to her. But absolutely nothing since. We are in England.

I was born in America and lived there until I was 7yrs old. Even at a young age I can well remember the school classrooms covered in space stuff - model rockets, posters of the moon, planets, solar system and mechanical orreries. As kids we were all over these things. I was about 5 and this would have been about 1968, so the reasons obvious. Space was cool and every kid was into it. 

But things are very different now. Eg I could tell that the main reason my friend’s teenage daughter wasn’t interested is that she’d decided (probably yrs ago) that having knowledge of things like astronomy wasn’t “cool”. If she’d been taught it at school then it had been forgotten and deliberately forgotten too.

Alice does an after school club - “Space Club” once a week. Interestingly she is the only girl. Although what really got me was that last year Space Club almost didn’t happen, as some of the boys were teased for being “nerds” for just taking an interest and wanting to go. Alice got some of this (apparently from girls) too. Says a lot… I was not impressed!

Edited July 9 by PeterStudz

[Craney]

As a practising science teacher in a modern state secondary school, I can assure you the Solar System and Space is taught at Key Stage 3  ( KS3)  (11 -14 year old ).

The problem is a double edged sword.   @ollypenrice is correct to suggest that the issue can be that pupils do not engage with the subject fully enough to reason through  some of the conclusions that we, the astronomers, take for granted.   

Also, a science teacher at the KS3 level these days tends to be a non-specialist . Biologists are more numerous than Chemists, who massively outnumber Physicists.

More often than not the Science teacher will be from another subject entirely, who is one page ahead of the pupils in terms of knowledge,  or a cover-supervisor who sits there and reads out instructions.

It is really not surprising that "Bad-astronomy" exists.    Let's not even go near conspiracy theories and modern day collective thinking.

 

 

 

Edited July 9 by Craney

[saac]

Water rockets, chemical rockets, compressed air rockets all studied in context of projectile motion and Newton's 3rd law. Designed, constructed and launched to much glee, hooting and hollering! Compressed air rockets tagged with telemetry - accelerometers to enable data collection. Study of Cosmology covering birth of universe, Big Bang with detailed examination of supporting evidence, expansion Hubble Lemaitre law,  accelerated expansion formulation of dark matter and dark energy theories, Kepler's laws of planetary motion, escape velocities, star formation, stellar evolution, star life cycle, Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, theory of relativity (Special and General), black holes and calculation of Schwarzschild radius - just to name but a few of the topics covered!  As for posters on walls, In S3 we run a space exploration competition where the pupils produce information posters and interactive dioramas - the standard of submission always takes the breath away. Each year the University of Strathclyde hosts the Scottish Space School where it takes about 50 or so applicants from Scottish secondary schools for a two week residential school lead by ex NASA astronauts. The winner of the Space School is taken to Huston in USA for an introduction to astronaut school.  Yeah we should do more of this in schools.   

Jim 

Edited July 9 by saac