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Charles Gwilliam Professor Trina Van Ausdal PHYS-1040 Tuesday April 21, 2014

Conversation Paper The Conversation Paper assignment was held on Sunday, April 19, 2014. I made invitations which I gave to each of the participants with the agenda provided. I outlined the agenda in case anyone wanted to study before the party. Of course when the conversation started one of the first questions was, What are we going to converse about? Sadly, I explained to them the agenda was on the invitation. In unison they all said, I didnt look at the invitation. The conversation was held at my house in the living room. We talked for one hour. There were four major topics I planned on discussing. After forty minutes we were finishing the first topic, which was probably the shortest topic. My wife always tells me Im long winded.

When I started to work on this project I was asking, how in the world can you invite people over to discuss astronomy? What will you talk about? How can you keep them entertained? One hour, thats ridiculous! Then one day the light bulb came on. The chapters Im currently studying are cool subjects to talk about. I had just finished with Chapter 14, The Expansion of Space, and was mesmerized with the Big Bang Theory. I thought everyone knew the universe was formed with this big explosion and stuff flying everywhere and stuff coming together to make the suns and planets. This chapter taught about ants on paper clips, coins on rubber mats, isotropic being people seeing the same impression regardless of which direction they are looking, or how the universe is homogeneous, meaning physical laws that apply to one

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part of our universe apply to all parts of the universe (pgs 358359 and 368-369). Thank goodness I remembered this because it helped me explain why something happening somewhere else in another galaxy is the same as it happening here. At the same time I had just finished with one of the discussions and was so impressed with the different articles posted. I found myself excited about two of them and wanted to share them with the conversation project. The four topics I selected were Spiral galaxies, glimpsing our place in the universe (Chapter One from the textbook), Big Bang theory, and Solar Flares. Included in the four topics I used the following URLs to help with the discussion: http://neurodope.com/2014/03/360-degree-video-view-of-themilky-way-galaxy/ and http://www.astronomy.com/news/videos/2014/03/fierce-2012-magneticstorm-barely-missed-earth.

As mentioned earlier, after forty minutes I found only one of the four topics had been discussed. The topic was the spiral galaxy and the group found how little we understood the subject. We used page 357 from the textbook and spent a long time just talking about how three different galaxies could be the same size but when viewed from their different place in the local group they appear to be different sizes. Keep in mind the participants in this conversation are all a little older. In fact, a couple of us remember the Big Bang, ha ha. We might have learned about spiral galaxies in the past but have forgotten what we learned in high school or early years of college. I shorted myself with time to particularly discuss the Big Bang Theory, which I was most looking forward to. I also knew I had committed to one hour and needed to adhere to it.

Five people attended the conversation. I had invited my mother in law, two sisters-in-law and my wife. Of course I was also a part of the conversation making the group of five. I choose these individuals because they have been supportive of me going back to school the past year. In most

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cases, the classes Ive taken have been fun, from the learning perspective, maybe not from the work perspective. As Ive taken different classes I found myself chatting with these individuals about things I was learning and boring them with my excitement for the class. With this conversation project I was able to have a captive audience to discuss astronomy, and they knew they couldnt walk away or it would hurt my grade.

When the conversation was finished the participants expressed a positive experience. They were supportive and were engaged with the conversation. During the discussion I knew I was asking questions or making suggestions about subjects I had recently learned, but was challenging them to help answer those topics. I know they were frustrated at times, when they would make the statement, stop asking hard questions we dont know about. Id then try to explain to them where I was trying to take the conversation. They were willing to learn, understand, and share what they knew.

What surprised me about the conversation was how much fun I had putting it together, the anticipation of having the conversation and the emptiness when it was completed. I was sure my attitude would be, another assignment is done and I can move on. Instead it was fun and I believe even though my wife was rude at times about being there, the other participants enjoyed it and caused them to think about the universe we live in. A major point I emphasized to them as we finished with the discussion, was the information available to us about the ever learning world of astronomy if well open our eyes. Im an avid reader of USA Today and a day doesnt go by where you wont find an easy to read article explaining a major astronomy topic if youll stop and read it.

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Overall I enjoyed the experience putting the conversation together and making it happen. If I could go back and have a do-over there would be a couple of things Id do different. (1) Hold it for two hours and make sure the participants knew it would be two hours. (2) Encourage them to look up the agenda items prior to coming. This would allow them, if they did, to have a little understanding what the conversation would be. (3) Do something hands on during the conversation, talking only can get boring. An example would be hands-on with the rubber mat and coins to demonstrate how the universe has expanded since the Big Bang happened. The conversation might have been better with these changes but I believe we did enjoy how it flowed and what was discussed. This approach to an e-Portfolio project and a students class work was awesome. I wish more professors would use a similar method, engaging their students to share with others via a discussion about their class.