Discoveries in the Physics & Astronomy shop | Science, curiosities, and surprises
Just over two decades ago, this was our introductory Astronomy lab packet. Things have evolved since then, but the bones are still there!
Three distinct nighttime observing labs, though? Jeez. Night sky conditions really were better back then.
Don’t put your fingers into a high-voltage electrical socket when the power is on. Don’t do it when the power is off, just in case.
It’s not even clear why someone would do this when the entire apparatus is unplugged.
Just don’t go sticking fingers into places not meant for fingers, please.
Behold, Canis Major, the Greater Dog! He’s such a good boy!
Sirius-ly.
Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970’s. Presumably a good chunk of it holds up? Chances are there are some spectacular discoveries (like our modern value of the Hubble constant) that would need a little updating. Maybe it’s also safe to assume that Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium has a few details now out of sync with our modern understanding?
By “our modern understanding,” we mean the field of experts, not the guys in the basement. We know stuff, sure. Some stuff.
Incidentally, Astronomy from a Space Platform is also from the ’70s. The proceedings from an AAAS symposium in Philadelphia in December 1970, it opens with an article titled “Energy Production from Nuclear Fusion,” highlighting the (then) current state of research on the subject.
Guess they didn’t yet realize what they were up against, but, hey, who doesn’t appreciate a little optimism now and then?
Ah, the annual astronomy craters lab. Lots of sand, lots of color powder, a handful of marbles and ball bearings and slingshots. And a mess that’s really something to behold.
It’s definitely a “don’t wear your good clothes” sort of lab session.
And an “all hands on deck” cleanup effort.
One of the key benefits of a 3D printer is the ability to create prototypes rapidly. Doesn’t quite fit? Adjust the model, re-slice, and set the new print to go. When you’re down to sub-millimeter tweaks with each iteration, it’s a relief to let the machine whir and ooze out the next version.
If at first you don’t succeed, try again and again and again and again…
It really wasn’t that long ago that computers came equipped with optical disc drives, and they were effective means of data storage, and the density you could store on a DVD instead of a CD was pretty exciting. Now? They’re not only borderline-useless, but the features that we used to reference as a cultural touchstone are no longer obvious to our students.
It’s not that they don’t know what these are. It’s that they haven’t handled a million of them to know their dimensions, to understand the diffraction rainbow they make. The physicists around here remember using the inescapable AOL discs as cheap, readily available diffraction gratings back in grad school. The astronomers use their proportions to illustrate the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy. Students now need to physically hold one of these to get the idea, because they don’t have a mental image ready to go.
Our Galaxy, if you were wondering, is roughly proportioned as a CD, only instead of being a millimeter and a half thick, is more like 1,000 light years. Very roughly, anyway.
Fifty-five years ago saw the launch of the Apollo 13 lunar mission, on 11 April 1970. It didn’t go to plan, of course. Things took a bad turn, could have been worse, but who can blame them for optimism in the weeks leading up to it all? Moon science is cool!
Maps, plans, a pretty tight itinerary. It’s expensive and difficult to go to the Moon, so you don’t waste time. But don’t those hand-drawn maps just make it so inviting? Presumably the astronauts carried maps which were much more detailed and useful, if less likely to get the kid inside all of us super-excited.
Apollo 14 would reach the Fra Mauro highlands in early 1971, though Lovell, Swigert, and Haise never flew into space again.
Lead bricks are useful things. This one – still bearing the stamp of Nuclear Associates, of Carle Place, NY – has had its fair share of scuffs and dents. (Lead’s soft stuff, you know.) These days it functions as a handy doorstop and a hands-on tool for explaining the density of matter.
Denser than water, than aluminum, than a nickel-iron meteorite. (All easy samples to acquire for demonstration.) Less dense than osmium; about half as much. (Not on hand, unfortunately.) Definitely less dense than the core of our Sun, by an order of magnitude-plus.
Also no handy samples of stellar core plasma on hand.
New decorations for the student lounge. courtesy of one of our radio astronomers. Come to think of it, we have a lot of radio astronomers.
Radio telescope arrays really could use some cooler names.