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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 best part of the trip was being able to have people from all over the country come to Pasadena and be able to work as a true team and bond as we all did science together. It was a great way to experience the way science is done in the real world, through group work and effort.
  • [student:]... this experience definitely changed the way I thought about astronomy and astronomers.
  • 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.
  • There is not a right answer from the back of the book. That "what 'you' discover" is valid as long as you follow the proper techniques and continually double and triple check what you are doing with the others in the team.
  • 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.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2011 - BRC team