 Bingo Monday one o'clock rock research in Manoa Jeff Killis-Davis and Hope Ishii both PhDs at the Institute Hawaii Institute for Geophysics and Planetology That which is part of so as to school for ocean and earth science and technology at UH Manoa welcome to the show you guys Thanks, Jay. Yeah, so um, what is your science there at HIGP? Hope you start Well, I actually study comet dust and asteroid Dust for the most part and also the fine-grained material in larger meteorite rocks Yeah, so when you take one of your reports and put it on the shelf it gets dusty immediately That's the kind of dust we don't want mixed in with our comet dust or it confuses the matter What's the difference? Well dust from comets and asteroids Come from these bodies that haven't gone through all the differentiation that our larger planetary bodies have and so they Largely preserve the the materials that were around at the start of our solar system Yes, we're able to by studying these materials We're basically able to look at materials from all the way back at the beginning of our solar system and and get information about the conditions And when was that exactly can you give me a date? Oh approximately 4.65 billion Who's plus or minus Jeff what about you is your science the same as home science? No, we do work a lot together But our science is parallel in a lot of cases You know I study rocks from the moon and remote sensing data of the moon as well as Mercury And then where we overlap a lot is I study asteroids and meteorites and try and connect the meteorites that we have here on earth Which are chips off of asteroids So that we can understand the composition of asteroids better, and of course, you know asteroids and meteorites are giving off the dust that Some of which hope collects and hope even has a facility on the big island that collects some of these dust particles Monalua I'm not sure what you meant by that question. Oh You you must have said something to provoke. Oh, yeah What's the name? Again, we have Alexa here at the table if you want her to say anything or answer a question or play music we can do that courtesy Amazon Where did I park my car? To give her name, but don't That's wonderful. Okay, so anyway, so You guys are Involved in research and I would like somebody to tell me what what it is research When you wake up in the morning and you say gee, I think I go research something today. What's that like? It's a process. It's not something It's it's an it's an ongoing process You you learn a little bit and then you realize how much more you don't know and so you're constantly Moving moving forward a little bit and see how how vast the expanse is of things that you don't know It's exciting. It's like being always at the front the frontier Knowledge and that frontier for me is you know ignorance on one side and what I know on the other side and you know Trying to dispel that ignorance and figuring out how the world works that's why I became a scientist because I was curious about the world and I found that geology was a way to kind of you know Satisfy that curiosity, you know wire mountains in a certain area wire volcanoes in a certain area wire earthquakes where they are and Through the science of studying earth geology, you know you get to understand those answers And then from there make a hypothesis and prediction of you know other you know Geologic phenomena really pushing pushing the barriers pushing pushing space and time Continuum right and through studying the earth we can study, you know Apply it to places like the moon or Mercury or Venus or in moons of the icy satellites or to the asteroids and even comments well actually so as an HIGP a world famous in this area, aren't they they? draw attention they their paper your papers and Your discoveries are world world known around the world aren't they you're a magnet, aren't you? We don't like to brag No, but I mean we have somehow achieved a level of excellence here at UH Manoa that is that's known everywhere Yeah, this is definitely one of the world centers of excellence for this area of research So you have to figure out your own when you wake up in the morning doing research You have to figure out what what you can research that day. How do you figure that out? Is it that border of ignorance and bliss? Well, we do set up, you know when we have a problem, you know pretty much We've always have written a proposal to NASA and outline our hypothesis and how we're going to test that So we're usually following that process and sometimes, you know, you're trying to test and it's not quite working out And you might find it in that quiet moment just before you fall asleep or in the shower or you wake up in the middle of Like, oh, that's what I've got to do. So science isn't something that you know leave at five o'clock and you You know leave it on your desk and you come back in the morning and there it is waiting for you It's it is something that's always kind of going on and not only as far as the science that You know you're doing for work. It's you know science at home and you know having fun with the kids You know Talking about how on my car do lands on one side of the car But not the other side of the car and then talking to my son He's only eight about thermal radiation and how the ground on one side of the car keeps it warm so the dude doesn't you know collect or condense on that side and It's just you know for me a fun way to see the world all the time. Ah Now we're getting somewhere. It's a way to see the world. It's a way to see thought process It's a way to advance human knowledge. That's thrilling, isn't it? It is and what and part of what's interesting to me is I think sometimes that kids do this in a very natural way Kids kids are natural scientists. They they're They're exploring their their world and learning about it And I think as we get older sometimes we think we've already got it all figured out and we forget that process of Asking questions and do that These people you know and they're really elderly, but they're they they think young they think like this 16 Those are the ones who are curious about everything Those are the ones are still trying to put it together in the middle of the night Waking up at 2 o'clock in the morning and saying, uh-huh. I got it now. I got it. I got it. Yeah So okay, the reason I wanted to know about that is because you're trying to Inculcate that into undergraduates and in this new program that you're doing with teaching Those these kinds of what? Let's see geophysics and planetology. I suppose and your respective areas of expertise To undergraduate students at UH Why why do you want to do this? Why do you want to have a new interactive course a new? Educational experience with them. What's missing in the current protocol? I think one thing is the lag time between When something gets into a book and gets to the students versus you know like you recognize, you know We're world leaders in doing planetary research, you know what we learned today we could put in our class tomorrow and You know, it's it's new and it's exciting and we're excited to teach like that The other reason was you know Science isn't about just learning terms, you know, we do have our vocabulary We do use it among each other, but it doesn't have to be the place they start learning, you know when you're three five ten What you're trying to do by asking all those questions is learn how the world works And that's what we want the undergraduates at UH Manoa to do we want them to see how the world works by Asking questions and then going explore the answers the answers, you know are the questions that they want to answer And then that way they become more engaged and learn the scientific process They learn critical thinking, you know all those key things that not our only requirements of this class But can be applied, you know outdoors in you know any setting in their their their workplace They also have to learn to communicate what you know, they have to communicate what they've learned and so the process of Presenting What you've learned and how you went about doing it. That's essentially the science fair coming up in April As it does every year, but you guys remind me of a fellow named Alex Filipenko Filipenko's a physicist at UC somewhere I want to say UC Santa Barbara. I want to say that but it could be UC somewhere else and He came here about a year ago and spoke in the in the Kennedy Auditorium there about Some kind of some kind of physics and space Issue I can remember if you give me time, but it that doesn't matter and and I went and we filmed it And we made a OC 16 movie, but what was remarkable is that I didn't understand what he was talking about And I tried I tried to listen to him, but I didn't know what he was talking about, you know physics But at the end he called for questions So up races all these eight-year-old kids They understood everything And they asked him the most amazingly sophisticated questions I don't know how you do that. It's maybe it's not generational. It's what you're talking about. It's the open mind It's unleashing what he did. He got lots of awards for being a popular teacher Leaching unleashing, you know this kind of curiosity thing and I think that's got to be part of what you're talking about In this class. I also think it's just all gonna be a lot more fun to teach this way I mean, it's the way I would have wanted to learn When I was in school, what's the what's the conventional ways lecture the conventional way is just generally lecture You sit and listen to you know your professor Talk to you and show you pictures and words for 45 minutes or 15 minutes And then you go home and you do a problem set and you try to answer questions based on what you heard But by being engaged in a much more hands-on manner You're internalizing things in a way that you can't do if you're just passively sitting and listening So in a conventional class, my my roots are in law school You do have Q&A. I mean you can ask their professor a question and it better be a good one And he can ask you a question and you better respond Is that in the conventional teaching of physics geophysics and planetology I mean, do you allow in the conventional way? Do you allow for Q&A both ways? Yes? Normally a question, but but I think that that that students grasp on the concepts and their ability to to Ask the ask the important questions is Hampered by just sitting and listening and I think if they when they get the opportunity to To try things out themselves. That's when they're really starting to to Get a get a full-in-up understanding that the questions are asking are really relevant and show that they're developing They're this is a modern way. I mean I've seen this We made a movie at mid-pack high school where they do modular teaching like this and they form groups And then the teacher usually learns more than teachers. Yes Exactly I don't know if it's that modern I think goes back to you know the Socratic Method Socrates Yes, you have groups of people and they're you know actively doing something and then they have you know a Mentor that oversees what they're doing and guides them when they get stuck as you know No one likes to get stuck and get frustrated We want them to you know get stuck and make mistakes. That's when you learn the most You know we all learn from our mistakes if you always get it, right, you know You don't quite learn as much You know, you don't know how you got there sometimes like I got the right answer I don't really know how you can't do it again. You can't apply it to other things, right? If you don't have that so how do you achieve this? I mean at first in a general sense and then we'll take a break and come back we'll go in detail But conceptually how do we achieve this interactive teaching experience in physics and planetology? So the way we want to achieve it is make it what would they call a student-centered classroom So it's not the professor up front. It's the students and we break them into groups and We let them explore the world because that's really the emphasis so at first we guide them through some questions And we'll can go in this in the next quarter. We'll talk about Things like okay, why do you think we have seasons and they'll think about it And then you know We'll start with some demos and some models and let them explore to see if the models confirm Or falsify their preconceived notions. Oh exciting either way. It's exciting. It is it definitely is a hard answer Through a question. You didn't know the answer But you had an idea you had yeah sure because you based your answers off of everyday experience and sometimes everyday experience is misleading as We'll find out as we'll find out right after the break that's Jeff Gillis Davis and hope is she e We'll be right back and we're gonna find out a lot more about it How interactive to your physics and planetology works? Hi, I'm Stacy Hayashi and you can catch me on Mondays at 11 on think tech Hawaii Stacey to the rescue. See you then I'm Ethan Ellen host of likeable science here on think tech Hawaii every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m You'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world Scientists who talk about their work in meaningful easy to understand ways They'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking a way of knowing about the world You'll learn interesting facts interesting ideas. You'll be stimulated to think more Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. Here on think tech Hawaii for a likeable science with me You're host Ethan Allen one nine eight. We're back. We're live Jeff Gillis Davis and hope is she from Higp at SOS. We're talking about interactive new techniques about teaching undergraduates Geophysics and planetology. So when I went to school, we always had show and tell Okay, how about a little show and tell what these things are these things on the table? well, these are half spheres that are that represent different planetary bodies and the idea here is to let the students in the group actually physically play with these things and to Take the information that they have from their own observations, for example, the Sun appears to rise in the East instead in the West so At this point, we know that they that the Sun is actually the Earth is actually This is our so yellow as our Sun This is our Earth and then we have a little moon and so using that information they can figure out for example This is the North Pole of the Earth They can figure out which direction the Earth should rotate and which and then similarly by knowing which Which direction the moon rises and sets and the night sky they can figure out which way the moon goes around the Earth and so this is this is the kind of exercise where they can work with something that's three-dimensional and Take their pre-existing knowledge and apply it to figure out something on a much bigger scale And in a manner that they wouldn't normally think about yeah, and after that done they could eat it because this is all mochi My kids tried it Okay, so do you actually use things like this in the class absolutely physical I mean, I think physical props if you will are great for for figuring things out in fact a lot of times When when there's a problem that is a three-dimensional problem for example We'll sometimes you know we ourselves make 3d props to look at things from from the right angle And then you can touch it absolutely So you are you're using all of your senses so what are the poo-poo's over in the left Oh, these little poo-poo's with the toothpicks and them so these are these are little props to help illustrate The way that the Sun lights up the Earth and the tilt of the Earth's axis So the Earth is actually spinning around its tilt axis and depending on where it is in its orbit around the Sun The the face that is illuminated is different relative to the tilt axis And so this we can use to describe how in the northern hemisphere When the tilt axis is pointing towards the Sun this side of the Earth is getting More solar radiation than the the southern hemisphere and this would be so this would be the the summer solstice In the northern hemisphere and the winter solstice and then the equinoxes on the other side So again a physical three-dimensional model they that the groups can play with and then try and figure some things out based on information that they have okay, and When when they how big is the group and do they each get a set of planets and Suns and moons and Yes, well We're gonna see how it goes, but we think we'll probably have groups of about four or five Students and they'll each have a set that they that they play with and that they try to try to figure out When they come to the class when they come to the group the team meeting, I guess They have they read up before they have a homework assignment. They do have some home. They do have some homework The way we're Structuring this the homework is more to introduce them to the concepts and get them sort of thinking about things before class As opposed to a graded exercise and then most of the the the actual Exercises that they do will be in class where they're solidifying the knowledge and and really internalizing it But we have more show and tell we have some photos Go through the photos and you can explain sure So typically so this is the advert that we're using for the class You know going out and you know seeing what's really out there because again, that's what science is doing is understanding what's out there and next slide So Hope made these so I'll let you talk So this is another way to to have students using real data this is actually data off of a NASA data server and the this exercise that the students do is to to Basically demonstrate that the Seasons are caused by the tilts of the earth which gives you higher solar radiation flux When the when the earth part of the earth you're on it's tilted towards the Sun and less radiation flux when you're tilted away from the Sun and So they can go they can actually go in and do their own data mining go and get their own NASA gives away That's because you already own it Dollars go to you know NASA, so you are part owner. What a wonderful concept. No kidding That's actually it's terrific. There's a lot of things you can do on this on this This data server, but the so the students go in and they can actually Import the data and plot temperature Versus dates and they can plot the solar radiation versus date and they can see how well those two Correlate with each other and if we can bring up that slide one more time the the first Images actually the blue line is the temperature between 2000 and 2001 these were just dates we picked at random So that's the temperature of Honolulu and then in red as a solar radiation flux And you can see that those don't have a very good correlation with each other and part of that is because Honolulu is Surrounded by ocean which tends to mediate thermal effects a lot how interesting but an eye when it There's no idea your plan law And you can see that the temperature and the solar radiation flux correlate pretty well, and if we go to the next slide The top image is from central Australia So now we have gone from the northern hemisphere down to the southern hemisphere And you can see that again temperature and solar radiation flux correlate really well. Yeah, that's even better than Iowa but the The peaks and valleys have switched because now we're in the southern hemisphere and so December in in the northern hemisphere is is cold, but it's warm in the southern hemisphere What about what about the temperature versus date? What does that mean? Oh, that was again just showing the the the The mirror image between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere And then we have a little Honolulu close to the equator which kind of So what we're trying to show with this is you know if you asked ten students and probably ten professors Nine out of ten students would say we have seasons because the distance between the earth and sun changes Over the year and we're closer in the summer than we are in the winter and I would say that and you would see okay You know why that is is you know, it's kind of our neanderthal self you get close to a fire You're warm you get away from the fire you get cold So that's the everyday experience that makes sense But what's happening is that you can see in those graphs is when our pole is tilted towards the Sun in the northern hemisphere We get longer days, you know It's about only two and a half hours different here in Hawaii Between our summer solstice and our winter solstice in Iowa It's about four four and a half hours difference and of course at the north pole It's 24 hour difference and you know summer solstice your light all day and in the winter solstice you're dark all night so that amount of solar radiation allows heating and You know the greater the solar illumination the warmer you get So that's what's causing our seasons and then when we're pointed away The sunlight is less direct we get low solar Irradiation and we get weather winter in the northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere has their summer So, you know, it's that idea of okay You ask a student what causes seasons and they say you know distance from the earth because they know it's in a little ellipse and What we can do is say, okay, then if we look at this data Why is it that the southern hemisphere has summer when we have winter? Wouldn't both hemispheres have winter and summer at the same time if it was governed by distance between the earth and the Sun? So that's a hypothesis and you can test it's like, okay No, both hemispheres don't have the same season. They have opposite seasons. So there must be another cause And then we can look at the the tilt and see how that correlates when the hole is tilted towards the Sun That's your summer and when it's away from the Sun. That's that hemispheres winter And we can then like okay the students did know that we're in an ellipse But one thing we can do again with the spacecraft data is look at the Sun when something is close to you And your everyday experience it's bigger than it is when it's farther away and with NASA spacecraft We can actually see the Sun is closer to us in the winter in the northern hemisphere winter And then it and about July 3rd the Sun's a little bit smaller So we're actually farther away from the Sun and doesn't make any sense at all Well, it's all because of that tilt and we haven't the next graphic. I think it's graphic for Oops. No next graphic Okay, so here we have, you know, one of these is a circle perfect circle And one of these is an ellipse that represents Earth's orbit around the Sun and to first order You would swear they were both circles and that's a good critical thinking and skepticism So what we can do is overlay the two That's the next way you do that. Okay. Yes I'm gonna tell you that the one on the left the blue one is a perfect circle Wow, and the one on the right the yellow one isn't What do you call it? It is the ellipse. Okay, so let's see. So let's see. You're right So the orange one is the ellipse But I you can see from that graphic that the Earth's orbit around the Sun while an ellipse is pretty darned circular It's pretty close. Yeah So with that, you know, we can see now that it's pretty close to a circle and that you know We do we are able to see the Sun get a little bit bigger and a little bit smaller depending on What month it is and in July we're in the northern hemisphere a little bit farther away from the Sun January we're a little bit closer. So this would advance their knowledge by large amounts because they come to you without really This kind of sophistication They come to you they probably haven't studied the subject at all except maybe grade school kind of exposure to it And now you you're telling him a we're gonna give you one One research point you have to look at and we give you tools to look and you have a team to Bad it back and forth and then you're on your own. How many research projects can they go through in a given semester? That's not that long. Is it just the one you start them with and the one they continue with or is it more where? We are intending to do for in a semester There are some other roughly one a month Yeah, yeah, and there there are some other classes that that actually do more in a semester But we're gonna we're gonna start with for and see see how far they get all this would be great It'd be great. I think it'd be very popular you hear that you gotta sign up for this one But what how do you grade somebody who was in the team like this who was dealing with you know problems? Some of them may be harder than others some teams may have a different experience entirely How do you how do you grade them? Is it just how you know subjectively how you perceive they're doing in the group? Well, we're gonna use the framework of the scientific method and so that that'll form the basis for for grading group projects how how well the the group has understood the forming a hypothesis and Deciding how to test it and carrying out the the full scientific process and so even though groups may choose different research avenues Ultimately the framework will be Will be the same now how well did you set up your hypothesis and how well you tested it? And maybe we can go to that graph plot. We only have a few seconds left. Oh, go ahead. Let's do it So one of the things they might see in this graph is that there is a correlation I'd like for see the slide three or four. Okay. Yeah that one. Yeah, so, you know here you see data for autism and number of incidences and organic food sales from years about 1998 to 2008 and you can see that the two are Correlated, you know as one goes up the other goes up So what we want to see is a student take this and be like could this be you know is there some connection between organic food and autism and You know, there wouldn't be and so what they would do is set up a hypothesis. Okay How will I test this? You know, what is it about organic food that could cause autism? Are there you know any data out there that I can get like that NASA data that would allow That and let them let them add it Come up with right. It reminds me so much of the science fair Because in the science fair their kids are you know, they're prepared to answer the question What is your hypothesis? What is your method of testing? But you know, what is the logic? What is your conclusion? Very interesting stuff and maybe your kids and Students in this program could go to the science fair walk around and ask those questions to all these high school students And we really get something interesting out of it. Anyway, you guys Jeffrey Hillis-Davis and wait, sorry Shee, thank you very much for coming down. It's been a very interesting discussion. I wish you well in the program Thank you. Yeah, thank you