Astrophysics Workshop!

“The planets are kissing!” a participant remarked at the Astrophysics Workshop hosted by us, All Girls STEM Society, on June 6th. The girls learned about celestial bodies in space; their properties, which prompted the first statement; and a bit of special relativity and black holes.

For the first half of the workshop, the girls learned about what made planets planets, and why some other bodies, like Pluto, were not considered planets. Then with a fun demonstration on how Earth tilts on its axis with the girls “orbiting” around each other, they learned about what causes the seasons, as well as why we stay in orbit around the sun. 

We finished the lecture with an activity modeling our solar system with styrofoam balls. In a moment of creative chaos, many girls choose to fingerpaint the planets instead of using the thin paintbrushes, collaborating –“I’ve done the math. To split [the planets] among us evenly, we need to cut children”– to make realistic models of the planets.

When we calculated the ratios of distances of the planets to the sun (dubbed SCARY MATH), the girls realized that the first few planets were much closer to the sun in the context of space than they imagined, hence the kissing planets in the model.

After a quick snack break, the girls learned about special relativity, how your perception of time changes as you travel at different speeds, and about the formation of black holes through the different evolutions of stars. One girl asked “are we able to stay conscious during spaghettification?” a phenomenon that would happen should one fall into a black hole (the answer is no, thankfully).

To close off the workshop, the girls used marshmallows and toothpicks to create their favorite constellations, with the marshmallows as stars. Two girls created a half of the gemini constellation and pieced it together at the end to show their friendship!
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The Astrophysics Workshop was an amazing, fun, you could say otherworldly, experience! Thank all of our volunteers, girls, and leadership for closing our last workshop of this school year with a big bang!