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Summer Visit - 2012 - C-WAYS

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, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The C-WAYS team came to visit in July 2012. The core team educators attended, plus 12 students, and two additional scientists.  Dr. JD Armstrong (LCOGT/UH) and Dr. Babar Ali (IPAC) also assissted.

Quotes

  • Real Astronomy is doing all the data research. It is not just about viewing [through] a telescope. It's about reading the numbers and understanding it.
  • The most surprising thing was that after all the complicated stuff was explained to us, and the big picture was revealed, it turned out that it really was not that difficult once you got the hang of it -- essentially it was just making some graphs and looking at some data -- so once it was explained (which it was, quite well) it got easy. I expected it to be mind numbingly difficult the entire time. There were also quite a few other [surprising things], but that's the most exuberant.
  • Even though not all of us could do every step flawlessly, different strengths balanced the different weaknesses.
  • The teachers and students did change the way I look at astronomy education. I saw more clearly that science education often goes from one success to the next never showing the details required to reach the scientific understanding. I wonder if an important point of the scientific process is not lost in this approach.
  • Working at a fast pace was exciting.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2012 - C-WAYS