The reason that I joined this forum is so I have people to discuss astronomy and space exploration with. I find that unless you belong to an actual astronomy club, study astronomy, or are graced with friends/family thay paid attention in elementary school, you're really out of luck.

Am I the only one that has a difficult time explaining what a lightyear is to my friends?

Discuss

Almost all of my friends grasp the basics with very little explanation. Heck, one of them then went and explained one to someone else who is, shall we say, not the most intelligent person I know and certainly not the best-educated. It sometimes takes a little patience, but so does most teaching.

ETA--oh, yeah, and I didn't have to explain "lightyear" to any of my friends, because they already knew. So there's that.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I don't think it's ever come up. But then, I have few friends that I'd discuss astronomy with.

BTW, isn't this section for BA stories?

I have had explain - to fellows holding masters degrees from well-respected universities - that the sun is a star. It's a matter of what you are exposed to in life and what holds your interest. In my experience, most people are quite satisfied that the sun simply comes up every morning.

Yep, for The Bad Astronomy stories, not mere bad astronomy stories. But it´s a nice thread.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

This does not speak well of "well-respected universities". At the very least, "Sun is a star" should be part of basic science requirements.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

One would hope...but the evidence said otherwise.

I suppose you're right. It is all about what holds your interest but I've always figured that there is such thing as general knowledge and to me everyone should have a basic general knowledge of the universe amongst other things like physics, chemistry, biology, math, history, geography etc.

Hmm. Isn't this what Dylan referred to as useless pointless knowledge. I'd rather know everything there is to know about, lets say, working with wood, than have very fragmentary knowledge on a thousand topics.

The other is more likely to do you good in the long run; also, if you only focus on one thing, how do you know the rest isn't interesting?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I have a problem finding people my age to talk to about space and astronomy. If only SEDS was bigger, and for High School, and with a more active forum...

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

I hate to be the pessimist, but it's bound to get worse
Once people get to my age, they tend to have long forgotten even the very few things they once learned about astronomy - and lost all interest, too.

Yep, had that many times, too - very frustrating.
What's nice though, is catching that moment of amazement when suddenly they realize that what they are looking at every night are gazillions of other solar systems.

I don't know; it's often seemed, in my experience, possible to "catch" people of any age. You just need to tailor your hook right. There are some people, though, where it's not worth the effort.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

What age would that be??

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

We sometimes compete with this school called John Glenn High in Cross Country, which gives me the chance to make all kinds of stupid puns:

Coach: "Tomorrow, we're racing John Glenn."
Me: "That'll be easy, what is he now, 80?"

Or

Coach: "Congrats, you guys beat John Glenn."
Me: "Does that make us Yuri Gagarin?"

And it really bothers me that nobody on my team gets them.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Only 40 - but pretty old from Kai's perspective, I guess

Anyway, I remember discussing these topics all the time with my friends at high school.
Now I cannot find anybody interested anymore - that's why I linger around here on BAUT

That's not old, you're 11 years younger than my dad.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

"Frustrating stories trying to teach astronomy/space... "

The CT subforum is full of that. lol.

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Look at the BAUT banner, something fishy about it. Boxing gloves are probably not able to withstand the pressures involved in space. Another thing, look at the astronauts visor? See the sun? It's in front of him, but the illuminated ground that we see in the reflection is also in front of him when it should be behind him. Furthermore, the stars shouldn't be visible if the camera exposure was set for viewing lunar landscapes and astronauts. In all, I'm fairly sure the BAUT banner is fake.

schlaugh. Agreed. Part of it the lack of the use of the word Earthspin. Every parent teaches their kid....watch the sunset over those mountains, watch the sunrise with me, isn't that a pretty sunset? (the most photographed object on Earth). Yet it never sets or rises. Removing the illusion, to see the Earth spin, is the first step that 99.99% never take. It should be a word learned by all elementary school teachers, but it isn't. pete

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A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

Great stuff. I love smack talk.

Ole Miss' routine against Alabama was from the Rockettes: "One, two three, kick--one, two three, kick."
Dennis Erickson was hit so hard it knocked the quarks out of him.
"One field goal attempt was so far right it almost hit Glenn Beck." Oh well, "the next time I throw a football it will be my first time."


On topic, the term Earthspin is quite useful. I remember being quite small and understanding the motions well. One little girl had problems understanding, so I held the globe and slapped it so it would spin and walked around a table (that was round and yellow no less) that I called the sun. With the other arm being the moon, I had that go around the globe. No luck.

We probably need two separate terms for "sunrise" and "sunset". Maybe Nightspin and Dayspin.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

I don't have any one particular story about how hard it is to try to explain astronomy or physics or mathematics or whatever to someone else. I'm just posting this reply because I'm sick and tired of seeing my name each and every day in the same thread. LOL

Eric

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“Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation.” - Albert Einstein

My Astronomy Site
My Geology Site

If the opportunity ever presents itself again, you could use a flashlight or lamp to represent the table.

As the globe spins, you could clearly see the light moving across the surface, but the source of the light staying in one spot.

I remember years back when I heard they were going to deorbit the ISS only a few years after it was completed. My sister was there and I started ranting about how important having a manned presence in space was, if we were ever going to actually go out and explore other worlds some day.

My sister was puzzled - it turns out, she was convinced that we already did visit other planets on a regular basis.

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That's more or less how my father explained it to me.
Earth was represented by an Orange, a table tennis ball was the Moon, and a flashlight represented the Sun.

I must have been 5 or 6 years old, and I still remember my utter astonishment about that revelation
(at first, I was convinced he was joking - how could the entire Earth rotate right under my feet???)

That is what is most sad of all. Some days I wish I had never watched sci-fi. It just gets your hopes up. Even after I read "The Science in Science Fiction" I was convinced that spaceflight would catch on, and we would have a better wold at least.

A lot of people focus on the optimistic predictions that failed to come true, but people made pessimistic predictions as well. In one book from just after Sputnik's launch at my school library (We have a lot of old books), a Soviet scientist was saying that he doubted anyone would walk on the moon until 2000!

If I hadn't been in the library, I would have laughed my head off.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Oh my, where do I begin?

__________________
“Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation.” - Albert Einstein

My Astronomy Site
My Geology Site

Oh, I think I have started here: Geology Discussion

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“Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation.” - Albert Einstein

My Astronomy Site
My Geology Site

Without the cold war paranoia that estimate might have been very realistic.
I don't think the Apollo program would have passed any normal safety standards and cost/benefit analyses.

It seems to me that during the space race, normal sensitivity to factors like cost and risk was literally suspended.
All that mattered was 'getting there first'.

That's also one of our challenges now that we are planning to go again:
nobody wants to assume those extraordinary levels of risk and cost anymore
(the other challenge is finding a really compelling purpose beyond just landing another person).