SPRINGTIME SCIENCETIME
--------------------
John Pazmino
NYSkies Astronomy Inc
nyskies@nyskies.org
www.nyskies.org
2010 March 21
Introduction
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The new York City Science and Engineering Fair this year was
deliberately put in March. In previous years it was menaced by winter
storms and was cancelled completely on its 2006 run. March in New York
is not free of winter storms, there being a massive attack on the 12th
and 13th that caused extensive damage and killed 6 people in the City.
However, the chances are far lower than for a fair in February.
So the Fair was set for Sunday the 7th of March at City College of
new York. The fair was held there for the past many years, except for
one when it was convened in the world Trade Center. I, as a judge, got
notice to show up at 10:00 for instructions and breakfast. I inquired
about details for the projects because in some prior years the
projects were assigned to the judges before the event. This time the
projects were distributed at the briefing meeting.
I and my colleague Steve Kaye of James madison High School and
Megan David yeshiva, arranged to meet at the Kings Highway station of
the BMT Brighton line at 08:00 EST. Steve teaches at both schools and
mentors science fair contestants from both.
The hour was later than the usual 07:00 because the procedure of
registering and judging was revised. Each year has a new procedure.
This year's allowed us to start off for the Fair an hour later.
Kings Highway
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This station is under a complete rebuild with many entrances and
platforms closed. This work is done under full train load with minimal
interruption to service. The main entry, however, was more or less
intact, so that's where we gathered.
I traveled by bus to the Brighton line and train to the very
station. i got there at about 07:30. I didn't have breakfast yet so i
stopped in a Mc Donald's a few doors down the block from the subway.
I met Mr Harvey, Steve's coworker at his city high school. I
recognized him but forgot his name. I joked that he was from Steve's
yeshiva. Others sitting nearby were startled! Mr Harvey is black.
I had a muffin thingie that for all the world tasted like a
regular McDonald's item, with egg and ham in it. The area around the
train station is glatt Jewish Orthodox. I imagined that the
restaurants would offer only kosher items. In this case there should
be no ham with the egg.
At first I thought the ham was really veal, a close substitute for
ham in kosher meals. But meat and dairy, the eggs, still don't belong
together in a kosher meal.
Later, at the station, Steve explained that most fast-food chains
don't consider local customs and serve the same standard items at all
their branches. This McDonald's does good business because it's near
the station and receives customers from outside the Orthodox district.
Observant Jews simply pass it up.
Mr Harvey had some of the high school kids with him, all chowing
down breakfast. We finished quickly, still before 08:00, and walked
back to the subway. Steve showed up with two of his yeshiva students
and a third, final, one arrived a moment later. The gang of us with
the eight kids in tow boarded the train to the City at about 08:10.
Weather
-----
Typicly the weather for the Fair is winter. A heavy coat and hat
are needed. This time the sir was really mild! i wore a thin hooded
jacket. All the others, too, wore light outer jackets. The Sun was
brilliant, just about all snow from storms of weeks past was melted
away.
As the train rolled across Manhattan Bridge on the way to the City
we all admired the deep blue clear air and dazzling Sun. All riders in
our wagon wore only light jackets, no hats or scarfs.
On the City College campus when Steve, Mr Harvey, and I had to
cross from the Fair's office in one building to the exhibits in an
other, we went with no jacket. We left them under an exhibit table.
Train to the City
---------------
Due to reroutings on this weekend, we rode the Brighton train all
the way to Herald Square and changed to a Concourse train there. The
transfer went smoothly without too much straying. With three adults
for the eight students, herding was pretty easy..
We were whacked by a reroute we didn't know about. All trains were
running local in 8th Av along the way to City College! By the normal
express route, the trip would have been some ten minutes quicker. So
we clunked along stop after stop until at last we arrived at 145th St
station in Hamilton Heights. It was then almost 09:00, about within
time to get the students gonged in at the registration desk.
We reminded the students that if they go to City College this is
the trip they'll have to make every day. i recounted how i did this
when I had 8 o'clock classes. I had to be IN MY SEAT at 8, so LEFT MY
house at 6 in the morning! In winter this was a very trying chore.
I explained I preferred this early hour over taking a class late
in the afternoon. At those years it was not a good idea to hang around
the campus after dark, like when a late class lets out. The College
was at the ground zero of the Harlem civil rights unrest.
Hamilton Grange
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City College sits on a bluff in Hamilton Heights, Manhattan,
overlooking St Nicholas Park on its east flank. The park is a hillside
about 30 meters tall, beyond which, to the east, is the Harlem Plains,
abode of the Harlem district of manhattan.
On the crest of the bluff, in Convent Avenue near the College
stood the house of Alexander Hamilton, Hamilton Grange. It was moved
to this location ages ago when the local streets were laid down.The
house is part of the national park Service property with tours and
cultural events. In front stood a statue of Hamilton.
The house was partially cut back to make room for a newer church
next door, but the bulk of its structure remained intact, if not all
that well maintained. When I was in school the grange was in full
decay with vandalism and graffiti.
In 2009 the National Park Service and the NYC Department of parks
relocated the entire house from its street location to inside St
Nicholas Park. It is visible from the patio of the College's Steinman
Hall on 140th St. It is set low enough to look over its roof to the
valley beyond and has new paths and entries at 141st Street and
Convent Av.
Steve photoessayed the move. He with hundreds of other history
buffs watched a gigantic mobile gantry enclose the house, lift it off
of its foundation stones, and crawl it around to the new spot in the
park. Convent Av was closed to traffic for the move, which Steve said
took a couple days. He did not see it in its final site since then.
We detoured the students to see the house. First we stopped at the
old site, now vacant with only the foundation stones and, curiously,
the statue. Then we walked over to the Steinman patio to inspect the
new location. The kids were impressed by the sight, looking like a
colonial residence surrounded by wooded land.
At City College
-------------
Like in previous years the fair was staged in Great Hall of the
College's Shepard Hall and the fair office, with breakfast and lunch
were in a newer academic center across Convent Avenue. We herded the
students into Shepard Hall to muster them in and get them to their
exhibit tables. They had plenty of time to set up their exhibits, it
being then only about 09:15 and judging didn't begin until 11:00.
Mr Harvey, Steve, and I went across the street for the breakfast
and briefing. There were about 350 judges filling the whole faculty
dining room. All were wolfing down plates heaped with hot and cold
food and going back for seconds. I took a second helping of some items
and wrapped a few muffins to munch on later.
The briefing was, ahem, brief with sketchy instructions about the
judging process. The main point was to gauge the exhibit by several
categories, listed on the scoring sheets. SInce i worked the Fair for
several years, i knew what was meant, if it was not clara mente
stated. Same with Steve and Mr Harvey.
Project assignments
-----------------
We were asked to shift to tables labeled with our judging
categories. Since many judges were given two or more categories, they
had to pick a principal one and sit at its table. We found later that
this made the judges miss projects from their other topics!
Fair crew dropped on each table a package of papers, explained by
the barker by microphone. The package had project scoring sheets and
descriptions for each topic, one per table, which we should divvy up
among those at the table. There were in my pack for 'Earth and
planetary science' three copies for each of six projects. But there
were only four of us at the table!
An agent explained that each project has to be visited three ties,
once for each copy of the scoring sheet, so please make sure each
person at the table has a full set of different projects. Well,
(6project ) * (3 copies) / (4 judges) is not an integer. We divided
the sheets into 4 or 5 per judge. Each project would be visited by 3
judges but not the SAME 4 judges.
We asked about projects for other categories, like in my case
Engineering. the crew said that we're stuck with only the projects for
the table we're sitting at. There are judges already at the
engineering table.
Judging is form 11:00 to 14:00. Then there is a public viewing of
the exhibits from 14:00 thru 16:00. Students must remain at their
booths thru the public visits, but may take a break to get a boxed
lunch from a room near Great Hall.
Judges turn in their score sheet at a nearby room in Shepard Hall
and then go to the faculty hall for lunch. After that they may go
home. We three had to stay until 4 o'clock to shepherd the high school
and yeshiva kids back to Brooklyn.
The judging
---------
We three nailed one of Steve's students to mind our coats and
bags. We slided them under his table and left them there until we went
home. The weather was warm enough to walk around outdoors without the
jackets. For taking pictures, I carried my camera in my pocket.
Each judge made the rounds of his projects as they were open to
receive him. If a project was occupied by a judge, we skipped it to
come back later. There was no prescribed order to circulate among the
projects. So long as all of the exhibits assigned to us were visited
and scored we id well.
We did not have to combine or compare score after the judging. In
certain prior fairs, the judges for a given category assembled in a
work room and did up a combined score for their projects. this time we
each handed in our individual sheets.
Because the projects were assigned at the last moment before
judging, at the tables in the faculty dining room, there was no prior
screening for conflict of interest. The barker advised us to pass up a
project we personally helped with by exchanging it for an other one
from an other judge. In my case there was no concern because i did not
assist any project this year.
Along with the project material, we got stickers for each judge.
We affixed one each to our score sheets so the score and judge can be
correlated by the Fair office. By this procedure the student had no
inkling of who will judge him, only that he better be on hand for
three visits. After the third visit he may go out for lunch.
The exhibits
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Apparently there were far fewer exhibits this year due to stricter
qualifications. Only students who did lab or project work were
admitted. This excluded most high school freshmen and sophomores,
Example of 'project work' is an Intel application. This is the
nationwide science compo that was formerly run by Westinghouse.
I guess there were 500 booths in Great hall, assayed by the fill
factor of the tables and the width of aisles between them.
There seemed to be looser rules for the exhibits. The boards were
of far more varied size, some with headsigns. SOme exhibits had props,
usually a gross no-no in prior years. Lettering and signs were more
erratic in quality from scrawled crayon to neat computer typography.
Offsetting this seeming decline of exhibit quality was the greatly
enhanced caliber of the students. at all of my projects the students
showed excellent knowledge of their work, answered questions fully and
carefully, even corrected me when I made a 'mistake' in understanding
the work.
All of my projects related to terrestrial science with nothing for
other planets. There were astronomy projects elsewhere on the floor,
mostly for the Physics category.
Time flow
-------
For our table of earth and Planetary Science, we had too few
projects for a full load for our judges. We split the projects 4-5-4-5
with me having five projects. I had three hours to inspect five
exhibits, a pace that allowed me to dwell at each for about 20 minutes
still lots of slack time to take pictures or look at other exhibits.
I looked over the scoring points and then discussed the exhibit
with the students. i made sure that I weaved these points into the
dialog to extract a score for them. As it turned out, all of my
projects were quite good, the main variation being in the
presentation. A couple dialogs or the display were a bit weak.
Otherwise, I scored them pretty high.
One of my exhibits concerned the earthquake in Spitak, Armenia. I
visited this earthquake in the 1980s! The student's eyes opened as
wide as dishes!! He never heard of any one from Armenia except for
Aremenian immigrants! I explained that i was an astronomer on tour to,
among other places, Byurakan Observatory near Yerevan and saw the
devastation of the earthquake at Spitak.
We chatted about Armenia, Soviet Union, Georgia, and such. Of
course, I scored him solely on the integrity of the project, which was
q clever one about monitoring certain outgassing in the soil at the
quake site. This effect could be a potential clue to a oncoming quake.
New observatory in New York City?
-------------------------------
I took my slack time to study other exhibits. Because i was
wearing a judge's badge, the kids took me for one of their judges and
flipped into spiel mode. I put them at ease so they could relax and
discuss their exhibit without fear of scoring.
One was a very intriguing one that comes back to me from about
fifteen years ago! One way to detect cosmic particles ('ray' is being
eased out of use for particulate radiation) is by scintillation. When
a cosmic particle hits a dense medium, like water, it slows a bit,
releasing energy as light.
This light emission is also slowed in the medium due to the
refractive index. refractive index is in fact the ratio of the
lightspeed in air, or vacuum, to that within the medium. For water
this is about 4/3.
The particle slows only a tiny bit, so it is within the medium
travelling faster than its emitted light, the Cherenkov radiation
effect. This luminance is detecter by a scintillation counter or
photometer mounted in the medium.
In Argentina there is a large array of these scintillation
counters built into tanks of water deployed over about a 100km radius.
The tanks were built specially for this cosmic particle observatory
and are functioning quite well in monitoring the influx of particles.
New York University on and off had interest in cosmic particles
going back to the 1920s. In its present revival the idea of building a
scintillation network at the campus is under study. The detectors and
monitoring apparatus are easy enough to buy or build, but what about
tanks of water?
The notion sprang up to avail of EXISTING tanks of water ALREADY
deployed over a large area all over the City. There are some 15,000
wood tanks of municipal water on the roofs of just about every mid to
high rise building on manhattan. Can these be fitted with photometers
to watch for cosmic radiation?
Studies are underway to determine the feasibility and safety of
converting roof tanks into cosmic particle observatories! NYU figures
to assemble a grid of about 500 tanks spaced about 1/2 km apart all
over Manhattan.
The instant student's exhibit was to test the geometric placement
of scintillation counters for best coverage of the sky and for
capturing the most particles.
Public viewing
------------
Steve, Mr Harvey, and I planned to assemble at the back of Great
Hall at 1:30PM for handing in the scores and going for lunch. We all
had only a few projects, with Steve having about ten. He was busily
visiting exhibits until quite 13:30 before wrapping up his work.
we turned in our papers, collected a thank-you gift, and piucked
up a lunch voucher. This was in addition to snacks provided in the
room.
we headed for the faculty hall with stern instructions to the
students to be at their tables at 16:00. They were free after the
judging for their own lunch and for the public viewing, but they had
to fall in for the ride home.
Lunch was a selection of combos that fit within the voucher value
of $7. Steve and I took a chicken cutlet sandwich with potatos and
soft drink. Mr Harvey took a hamburger meal. Back in Great Hall we
scooped up some of the snacks to munch on until 4 o'clock. we
separated to cruise the exhibits or take a stroll in the balmy air.
The exhibit hall now was an olio of noise and crowds. The place
was filed wall to wall with adults milling around and clogging the
aisles! I suspect most were parents or teachers coming for their kids.
They bunched up in gaggles here and there. Te students horsed around,
played games, took naps.
By 3:30 the exhibits were coming down. First one, than an other.
By 3:45 most were dissembled. Mr Harvey gathered his students and left
a bit early. Steve and I collected our set of kids, helped them pack
their exhibits, fetched our jackets and bags.
At quite 16:00 we saddled up for the ride home, retracing our
steps to the subway at 145th St station. The ride home was just a
quirky as the ride to the College, yet comfortable with no time
constraint.
Celestial finale
--------------
I got off at Av J station, near my house, while Steve and students
continued to Kings Highway. The sky was clear, amazingly so. By the
time I arrived at my house the twilight was waning into full night.
Stars of 2nd magnitude were plainly seen, including the whole Winter
Hexagon in the south.
I was annoyed by a persistent white speck low in the sky to the
west. As I walked I realized it was not some local lamp or reflection.
What was it? I took alt-azm measurements and noted the hour.
At home I scooted to an upstairs room facing the west, with a
lower skyline and less tree and wire interference. The speck was still
there, now in open sky. A planetarium program verified my hunch. It
was Venus! I saw venus hundreds of time before low in the west but I
can't recall seeing her so low and so close to the Sun. After a few
more minutes Venus sank behind houses to cap off a long tiring, but
happy, science fair.