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Summer Visit - 2011 - BRC team

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The BRC team came to visit in June 2011. The team's core educators attended, along with 10 students. IPAC staff member Mark Legassie also assisted.

Quotes

  • [student:] The most surprising thing that I learned was how much telescope data is available and how it is open for anyone to look at.
  • In its current form, anyone with moderate computer skills and high school physics can download, explore, and begin to understand available data. Student involvement in authentic research is an idea whose time has come. As a teacher trained in these techniques, I intend to facilitate investigations by students for many years to come.
  • The best thing about the trip was the real world experience. Just like a real scientist, we worked with others to accomplish our goal by using the data and making graphs and calculations to find what we needed. We helped each other out, compared our answers, and learned from our findings and mistakes.
  • I thought [astronomy] was just about looking at the sky and going, "Oh, look. There's a new star." It's not like that at all. There's a lot more work that goes into it from looking at the pictures to crunching the numbers to researching previous projects to see if what they are finding is right.
  • I really enjoyed working with the teachers. It was important to help each other out and realize that you are going to make mistakes...

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2011 - BRC team