Cosmology Courses for Planetarium Staff: A Professional Development Tool That Brings Current Astrophysics to the Public

Mathematics – Logic

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

Scientific paper

Teaching museum staff about the latest scientific advances offers a unique mechanism for bridging the gap between current research and the general public (see http://cfcp.uchicago.edu/education/courses/index.html). Although research frontiers are where scientists' passion and enthusiasm are greatest and the public interest is piqued; it is a challenge to integrate complex forefront science, which is not yet found in text books, into museums settings. Intensive short courses for museum staff (a.k.a. professional development) taught by active researchers offer an effective means to connect the public with emerging science topics. Researchers provide the Big Picture, knowledge of what is and isn't significant, intellectual frameworks for describing new phenomena, and answers to questions that arise. Museum staff can then translate this new knowledge into content that is interesting and appropriate for the public, taking into account public tastes, misconceptions, pitfalls, etc. This "public" is enormous, an estimated twenty four million people visit US planetaria each year. Cosmology short courses for planetarium staff offered at the University of Chicago have been incredibly well received and resulted in new planetarium shows seen by tens of thousands of people. The key features of such courses will be described with an eye towards how this model might be adopted by other institutions, and in other areas of physics
This research was carried out at the University of Chicago, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and was supported (in part) by grant NSF PHY-0114422. KICP is a NSF Physics Frontier Center

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Cosmology Courses for Planetarium Staff: A Professional Development Tool That Brings Current Astrophysics to the Public does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Cosmology Courses for Planetarium Staff: A Professional Development Tool That Brings Current Astrophysics to the Public, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Cosmology Courses for Planetarium Staff: A Professional Development Tool That Brings Current Astrophysics to the Public will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1646381

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.