Along with our efforts to understand telescopes, my effort to include an abominable pun in the blog post header continues through day two of Reach for the Stars. While we learned to assemble and disassemble telescopes yesterday, we saved the more theoretical laws governing the innermost workings of telescopes for today. In the course of one day we speedran the Physics WEL (Waves, Energy, and Light) curriculum with the help of Dr. Greenwolfe’s instruction and a variety of miniature lab experiments.
An amphibious anomaly awaited us as we entered the classroom. Atop mirrored saucers sat (hovered?) a hologram of a frog; the real frog sat inside the saucer. While I watched Angela immediately find the frog within the saucer, I also saw another group reach for the illusory frog and examine their empty hands with horror.
We continued on learning all we could about diffusion, reflection, and refraction, in addition to the effects of curved surfaces on light. Using what we learned about focal points and magnification, we created our very own Galilean telescope-adjacent devices and challenged ourselves to achieve as much magnification as we could strictly using materials from the lab. Below, a group demonstrates how many Cary Academy students it takes to hold a telescope (four).
Tomorrow we travel to the NC Museum of Natural Science to talk to one of their resident scientists.
