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Ms. H knows one of the most important tools in the attack on this problem is modeling galaxy formation on supercomputers. She wants to help her students get a feel for what these scientists are doing in order to enable them to see science as a process of inquiry, and to provide a natural way of incorporating simple research projects involving the development and use of models.
In class the next day, Ms. H asked how they might solve the mystery of the the actual nature of this object. Although some of the students had learned the true identity of the object by looking in books or asking their parents, Ms. H simply capitalized on this as an opportunity to help the students understand that science is more than a set of facts available in books or from those that have read books. She commended the students for seeking further knowledge outside of the classroom, then presented them with a question--how did the book, parent, or other source know what the mystery object was?
The class eventually agreed that the scientists learn these things through observations. Ms. H asked the students if they could make the same observations that the scientists made. Many students suggested requesting an image of the Mystery Object through Hands-On Universe (HOU). The image was requested in plenty of time for use by the day of the first galaxy lesson.
In order to add a touch of realism to the activity, Ms. H suggested that the "press release" be "published" on a CaMILE discussion list, where students from other schools could respond to it.
The students split into groups, with each group given a copy of the image. Using the image processing tools of HOU and the guidance of Ms. H, the student groups each came up with arguments as to the nature of the mystery object. As the ideas began to develop, Ms. H helped the students realize that they should look for other similar "mystery objects." This would help them understand whether the Mystery Object was a common phenomenon or "one-of-a-kind". She introduced the Messier catalog of "fuzzy objects," and the students requested images of several other Messier objects for comparison.
As the students began to see the various types of galaxies, clusters, and nebulas in the heavens, Ms. H narrowed the focus of their study to galaxies. She discussed with the class the fact that certain features are present in some galaxies, but not others. Once the students began to identify these features for themselves, Ms. H pointed them to the galaxy feature identification activity at the HOU web site. Time was set aside for the students to spend time taking the online quizzes and mastering the vocabulary and identification of features of galaxies.
Finally the press release was finished and uploaded to the CaMILE site complete with pictures of the images they collected. Ms. H wrapped up this phase of the project with a discussion of what the students had agreed to put in the press release, and assigned them to write a report individually as a technical follow-up to the press release. In this report they were to give a scientific justification for each claim made in the release.
Ms. H first pointed out how strong the similarities were between certain galaxy types. She reminded the students that when a scientist notices a pattern, it is a natural step to be curious about it and attempt to investigate it. She asked the students to think about what questions a scientist studying galaxies might have about the patterns that appeared in their observations.
The following list was generated:
As an introduction to the MASTER software package GalaxSee, Ms. H presented the lesson "Rotation and Flattening", which shows how a large group of gravitationally bound objects will flatten out if a rotation is applied to it. She helped the students understand that this could be a partial explanation of why many of the galaxies they had observed were flat. In the process of presenting the lesson, she explained the options and functionality of GalaxSee so that the students would be familiar with its operation when they started working with it themselves.
Her next step was to present the guided activity "Intruder Galaxy," in which students experiment with the effect that gravitational interaction with another galaxy can have on galactic structure. She emphasized the part of the lesson discussing the careful recording of observations, explaining that success in scientific inquiry is highly dependent on accurate and honest reporting of data.
To demonstrate the role that collaboration plays in science, Ms. H once again used WebCaMILE. This time she had the students prepare technical reports of their findings in the "Intruder Galaxy" activity and post them to a CaMILE server. In preparation for this activity, she had corresponded with a computational scientist, Dr. M, who agreed to mentor this project. Dr. M read the reports on CaMILE and posted questions for each report designed to help the students see what kinds of questions scientists ask when they see a report. Since Dr. M was in contact with another group of students doing similar things, he proposed that Ms. H's class join in the discussion that they were already mediating with CaMILE.
Soon to Come
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