Letters from an Astrophysicist
Page 14
Hello Bronwen,
Thank you for your summary reflections.
I have several reactions to your comments.
1.To be gifted in a class of non-gifted students is indeed a recipe for being ignored. But to be gifted in a class of gifted students is, in every case I know (and have heard of) a means for the city/county/state to devote extra resources to the “needs” of the gifted. My comments referred specifically to gifted programs and gifted schools, of which there are many.
2.In my experience, a primary means by which children are identified as academically gifted is by their performance on IQ tests and standardized exams. If school is to prepare us to achieve in society, then, above a certain minimum level of performance on these means of assessment, your scores are irrelevant to the kind of citizen you become—in adulthood and in the professional workplace, after your first job, nobody asks or cares about your GPA or IQ or SAT scores. I invite you to walk up to any older person (30+ years of age) and pose that question.
3.Let’s go on a reasonable, but yet-to-be-confirmed assumption that ambition, as expressed through adulthood, does not directly correlate with GPA—like I said, if it did, then all of society’s greatest achievers (entrepreneurs, lawyers, actors, comedians, artists, athletes, architects, musicians, statesmen, generals, CEOs, presidents, mayors, senators, governors, community leaders, authors, directors, producers, etc.) would be occupied only (or primarily) by those who got straight A’s in school. But this is simply not the case. So if ambition can be found in almost any package, and since by design, there are more people who do not get A’s than those who do, then perhaps somebody (a dedicated educator) ought to be in search of those who have it. Or better yet, design curricula that develop it.
4.Not that you have any obligation to follow my advice, but in my opinion, if you want to make your mark as an educator, then why not explore how to assess, or otherwise code for ambition, and nurture those students? This will be of incomparably greater value to society than you chasing after “smart” kids just because they are smart.
As a minimum, all I ask is that the label “gifted” be changed to “kids who work hard,” so that the club does not come across as exclusive and impenetrable to those outside of it.
All the best in your school and career.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Accuracy
Saturday, September 25, 2004
Via Email, Forwarded from the
Natural History Magazine Inbox
Dear Sir/Madam:
I am writing to you from the U. S. Academic Decathlon (USAD). Last year, you granted our organization permission to publish an article titled “Dust to Dust,” by Neil deGrasse Tyson, published in the May 2003 edition of Natural History magazine, in our curriculum materials.
We have since received a couple of complaints from one of our coaches about the accuracy of the content. I am very much hoping that the information in the article is correct, and the coach is incorrect, as I would hate to have to issue any corrections.
Here is one of several examples from the Curriculum Director:
Your article says that the Sun will eventually become a red giant and swell “a hundredfold in size.” One of our coaches feels this is incorrect: When the sun becomes a red giant it will swell to the present orbit of the Earth, 93 million miles from the sun. The sun’s present diameter is 864,000 miles. If it increases in size a hundredfold, it will be 86 million miles in diameter. That means its radius will be 43 million miles, less than half the distance to the Earth’s orbit.
Would it be possible for someone to look into his concerns. Thank you in advance for your time and assistance. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Terry McKiernan
Dear Mr. McKiernan,
Thank you for your enquiry. You raise important questions that relate not only to the accuracy of quantities reported in my essay but also to the accuracy of astrophysical quantities in general.
Astrophysics is unique among the sciences for the sheer range of numerical values represented in the objects and phenomena we quantify. For example, the ages of stars span from hundreds of thousands of years to hundreds of trillions of years, depending primarily on the mass but also on other factors.
The temperatures of stars range from a thousand degrees on the surface of the “coolest” stars, to nearly a billion degrees in the cores of the hottest stars.
The wavelength of the longest measured radio waves are meters across, yet the wavelength of the shortest gamma rays are less than one hundred billionth of a meter.
Most things we measure or quantify in everyday life do not span this breadth. So if you get half-off on your store purchase, or if one item is twice as large as another, or if one object moves three times as fast as the other, or contains half as many items, we psychologically think these represent large differences. In astrophysics, however, these differences are small, knowing that the measured properties of things can range by factors of hundreds, thousands, or even billions.
When communicating with each other in astrophysics, we invoke high precision only if some other physical quantity depends upon it. Otherwise, the precision is not only distracting, but in most cases, observationally or theoretically unjustified.
When the Sun dies, in about five billion years, it will swell to be so large that it will engulf the inner planets. The “edge” of such bulbous entities are actually poorly defined—where is the edge of the cirrus cloud overhead? Where is the edge of the fog through which you drive? The limit of Earth’s atmosphere has no sharp boundary either, so people pick a value that suits their needs. That’s why, if you look up the size of Earth’s atmosphere in multiple (independent) places, you will likely find very different answers, none of which are wrong.
In another example, a question as simple as, “how many planets are there in the solar system?” does not have an unambiguous answer. Six moons, including our Moon, are bigger than Pluto. Not only that, several objects in the outer solar system are almost the same size of Pluto (within a factor of two). So what matters more than “how many?” is “what are their various properties?” and “what features do they have in common?”
And how about the question of when Isaac Newton was born? This too, does not have an unambiguous answer. According to his mother and all local records, he was born on December 25, 1642. But at the time, England (where Newton was born) used the Julian calendar. Today we use the Gregorian calendar (introduced by Pope Gregory in 1582), which is shifted by ten days from the Julian calendar, and not yet adopted in Protestant England in Newton’s time. The ten-day difference would place Newton’s birthday on January 4, 1643, on the Gregorian calendar. The two answers are different and legitimate—he was indeed born on Christmas day in England.
All this leads to my final point. In spite of how science is taught in grade-school, or in spite of what the public thinks, science is not so much about getting the right answer as it is about getting the right idea. In a contrived but illustrative example, if asked to spell “cat” on a spelling bee, and you answered “k-a-t,” you would, of course, be marked wrong even though k-a-t is the actual phonetic spelling of the word. The problem here is that you would be marked equally as wrong had you spelled it “z-w-q.” I consider this fact a shortcoming of our educational system, where we are not trained how to think but what to know.
So perhaps for future competitions, when science is the subject, you should find questions that test understanding rather than numerical precision. You would be doing a service to the next generation of students as well as to the intellectual capital of this Nation.
Sincerely,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
* Name changed.
Chapter 11
Parenting
Newly born children do not arrive with instruction manuals. And while hundreds of professions require that you become pre-certified, a new parent, with no experience at all, is expected to raise a healthy, productive child by w
hat amounts to on-the-job training. This fact magnifies the value of shared wisdom among parents, all trying to do the best job they can. At times, the challenges to success can seem endless.
Doing Time
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Communication via US Postal Service
Dear Neil deGrasse Tyson
As a father of two bright teens, I write seeking your advice on how to encourage their STEM studies.
I am serving a 92-month sentence at San Quentin for gross negligence vehicular manslaughter, with an anticipated release date in late 2019. Accordingly, I have very limited opportunities to communicate with my precious children—no internet, phone calls limited to 15 minutes, and intermittent visits. I want to encourage my children to study science and math. Given their keen interest in astronomy (one seeks to become the “first astronaut veterinarian”), I hope you could direct me to resources, websites, or organizations my children may use to grow and learn, given their potential.
The consequences of my crime are manifold and impact my children in more ways than I can fully appreciate from San Quentin. Still, I hope to stay involved in their continued development. Any recommendations you could make would be greatly appreciated.
Might my kids visit you in New York? A chance to see a famous scientist, arranged by their father, would be evidence of my continued love for my children—and a special adventure as well.
Regards
Wayne Boatwright, CDC No. AN0094
San Quentin, California
Communication via US Postal Service
Dear Mr. Boatwright,
One of the great revelations of parenting: when you have curious, motivated children, the intervention of a grownup carries almost as much risk in squashing their ambitions as it does in nurturing them. Deep down we know it’s true. As the saying goes, we spend the first years of children’s lives teaching them to talk and walk, and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.
Also, to all our collective dismay, research persistently shows that parents have only marginal effect on the personality that their kids ultimately develop.
At your kids’ ages they’re surely internet savvy. NASA is not a hidden entity in the media universe, and YouTube abounds with clever and interesting science videos. So I have no doubt your kids are plugged into the moving frontier of science, in proportion to their depths of curiosity.
As for becoming an Astronaut Veterinarian, I don’t know how soon we will be taking pets or farm animals into space. But when that day comes, space will have become a routine destination, and we’ll probably need tons of Space Vets.
Rather than arrange to have your kids visit on their next trip to NYC, let’s wait until you get out, and perhaps you can bring them yourself. You then become part of your kid’s memory of that visit.
And if such a trip is not in the near future, I give public talks in California with some frequency, with San Francisco as one of my most loyal fanbases. I will be delighted to meet and greet your two kids when such an occasion arises.
Until then, as always, keep looking up.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Postscript: Having worked hard to rehabilitate himself, Wayne Boatwright was released 500 days early having earned “good time” credits, and has since started a Facebook group, The San Quentin News Crew, to serve as a model for his prison peers.
On Pretending
Monday, March 23, 2009
Dear Neil,
I want my boy to be like you, so I will have to pretend I don’t like you.
Thank you for representing being smart in such a favorable way.
A weak astronomy student,
Doug Fedinick
Dear Doug,
Whatever it takes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Starry Starry Night
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Dear Neil,
When I was a kid, my father and I would sit on top of the big green family station wagon and look at the night sky. We would find the constellations and I would make up my own. My favorite was the Fat Hobbit. I haven’t stopped looking. Now my father is coming to live with me. I don’t have a station wagon, but I do have a fabulous telescope, which I use to get other people looking up. And when my dad gets here, once again we’re going to go outside, just the two of us, and look at the night sky.
Lizdel Collado
Dear Lizdel,
Thank you for sharing your personal and touching reflections.
All the best, under the canopy of your starry skies.
Neil
Home Schooled
Many Christian parents who homeschool their children do so to ensure that the curriculum is rich in Biblical views of the natural world. This often throws established science into question, especially the subjects of evolutionary biology and the origins of the universe. Lisa McLean lived in a religious community where she was homeschooling her daughter, and she was torn by what the religious curricula told her compared with what the discoveries of science reveal. In August 2005 she asked how I handle these conflicts with my own kids.
Dear Lisa,
Thank you for your candid letter.
You asked what I teach my children. My answer is—I do not worry about what they know as much as I worry about how they think. This just might be the highest of all pedagogical goals, because the most important moments in life occur at times when how we think will matter more than what we know.
Teaching someone how to think is hard, and takes more effort on the part of the teacher and student. Among other things, it encourages them to ask questions. It involves being comfortable with ignorance, if that happens to be our collective state of knowledge at the time. It involves experiment and inquiry.
I do not teach my kids about magnetism. I just give them a sack of magnets and tell them to go and play.
I do not teach my kids about centrifugal force. I take them to an amusement park and go on the spinning rides with them.
I do not teach my kids about chemistry, I simply ask them, Have you ever mixed baking soda and lemon juice together? (This combination creates quite a chemical reaction—try it with your daughter.)
When their flashlight doesn’t work, I do not say, “It needs more batteries,” I say, “Let’s test the batteries to see if they are dead.” We then put the batteries in a battery tester to investigate first-hand.
When they ask me a question that I do not know, I reply, “Let’s find out,” and we go to a book or surf the Internet for answers.
If they believe something in the absence of evidence, I ask them, “Why do you believe this?” or “How do you know this?”
For example, right now, my daughter is transitioning out of the tooth fairy stage. She now thinks the tooth fairy has been her parents all these years. This prompted a major discussion in her class. So they proposed an experiment to test the idea. The next person whose tooth came out would not notify his or her parents, but would simply take home the tooth and put it under the pillow. Any real tooth fairy would know about this. But parents would not. If there’s no money in the morning, then the experiment strongly argues against the existence of a tooth fairy. That is an example of how to think mattering more than what to think.
As for your direct questions—the Big Bang is the most successful theory of cosmic origins ever put forth, and has reached consensus in the astrophysics community. We are now on to other problems. The public perception that scientists go from one truth to another is simply false. In the modern era of science—that is, in the era of experiments, when a theory has been resoundingly supported by data—that theory does not one day, all of a sudden, become wrong. The worst that can happen to the theory is that it gets incorporated into a larger, more powerful idea of how the universe works. So the Big Bang is here to stay, in its current form or in a form where it plays a part of a larger cosmic understanding.
By the way, religious documents are generally referred to as “revealed truths.” And true believers of
them hold those documents to be divine and unerring. This has caused nothing but trouble in the history of human culture, particularly when two different religious groups hold conflicting ideas of what is “truth.”
So, in my judgment, the word “truth” will not serve your child’s needs as much as the word “investigate,” or, better yet, the word “explore.”
With best wishes to you and your family,
Neil
Scary Smart
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Dear Dr. Tyson and any other kind brainiacs,
My Aspergers son Jack* is scary smart and could very well be the next Einstein, which is his nickname. I’m trying to reach out to other super smart scientists who may be able to help Jack grow his gift. Jack’s vocabulary and obsessions consist of things like concept cars, nuclear fusion, biotech, particle accelerators, dark matter, anti-matter, worm holes, black holes, nanobots, creating cures for disease, and lots of hydrogen! I have no means of nourishing Jack’s brain. His spirit has been almost extinguished by his public school environment.
I want so badly for Jack to have connections with other people. That can’t happen when the people surrounding him can’t relate or understand, or believe what he is talking about. Jack is almost 15 and on the verge of serious depression due to his struggles, loneliness, and feelings of inadequacy. It makes me very sad to think that he may never get an opportunity to do something BIG for this planet.