LAST Friday, I sat inside the audiovisual room of the Leonides S. Virata Memorial School (LSVMS) in Rio Tuba, listening to a bunch of young men explain the heavens to their audience.
The young men in their early 20s were members of ScienceKonek, a group committed to bringing science to the level of ordinary folks like you and me so that we too could appreciate what the sciences have to offer, and be in awe of the natural universe.
Ralph Abainza (a geology student at UP who still has to finish his degree); William Kevin Abran (who is into applied physics); Jan Mcknere Pavia (studying meteorology at Bicol State); Jan Payonga (geological engineering) and Jan Luis Antoc (computer engineering) accepted my invite to meet with the members of the science club at the LSVMS in our mining townsite in Palawan to, I hoped, further whet the appetite of the science-inclined among the school’s students.
‘Now I know: Planets do not twinkle, and stars are more circular than pointy!’
We need to produce more scientists and earn a Nobel or two.
I think whetting the appetite they did. It helped that they brought along this telescope (I kept jokingly using the term stethoscope) which was set up in the quadrangle outside the school just as the sun was setting; the result was a long line of students – and teachers (plus me!) who took a peek at Jupiter (so clear in the early night sky!) and then Saturn, and who even got to see at least two satellites streak by the southernmost tip of Palawan.
Before we peered into the heavens, we spent an hour and a half chatting with the high school students about what the heavens contained. On my prodding (and for my enlightenment), William defined “planet,” “solar system,” “galaxy” and “universe,” and a student even asked him to explain what “black matter” was.
Interestingly, William has a claim to fame. When the Philippine Space Agency called for proposals for experiments to be conducted in the International Space Agency last year under the aegis of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), his was one of six from around the world that was selected and performed in space. His proposal was The Dumbbell experiment — “a microgravity experiment to observe how dumbbell-shaped objects rotate in space. The Dzhanibekov Effect, which describes the movement of a rigid object, causes some shapes to spin or even flip when spun in space unstably.”
Here’s the sad part: because our government agencies didn’t have the 80,000 to cover his expenses to go to JAXA to be there himself, the Philippines was the only country among the six finalists that was not represented in person.
(Not good enough for confidential funds, I guess?)
It was a short trip that had many firsts — for five of the six young men (except Ralph) it was their first time to fly to Palawan and to be at the westernmost part of the Philippines; for one of them it was the first time to ride a plane; and for many in the audience it was the first time to know that if you see a twinkling light source in the night sky, chances are that’s a very distant star (the distortion caused by the distance traveled by the light from the star is what makes it appear to twinkle) and not a nearby planet.
And — horrors — we all found out that stars do not have five pointed tips — which means we (among several countries!) have to redo our flag — and the USA needs to find a different shape to resent its 50 states on its flag!
There goes the star of Bethlehem, too!
Now I know: planets do not twinkle, and stars are more circular than pointy!
