Published: December 15, 2008
Mr. DeWolf did a 45 min session on his involvement in the Spitzer program, at the MESTA conference on Oct 4th. It included a PowerPoint overview of what he and his students are doing in the Spitzer program. He also showed one of the activities from the SOFIA Active Astronomy lessons - sensing infrared light with solar cell detector and digital cameras. In addition, he put together an activity where teachers and students built a light detector with a jumbo LED and digital multimeter. Teachers explored the different voltages produced by different wavelengths. They also were able to detect light from a remote with the sensor when an infrared LED from the SOFIA kit was used in the sensor.
Mr. DeWolf has created a wiki site to help teachers incorporate infrared astronomy topics in their classrooms. http://spitzer-science-at-chhs.wikispaces.com/