{"id":15928,"date":"2013-04-15T15:58:39","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T01:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=15928"},"modified":"2020-11-06T13:29:38","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T23:29:38","slug":"astronomy-event-inspires-kids-young-and-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2013\/04\/15\/astronomy-event-inspires-kids-young-and-old\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomy event inspires kids young and old"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><div class=\"responsive-video-wrap\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"676\" height=\"380\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QXN3wBy3sTo?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" title=\"YouTube video player\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Launching bottle rockets, making comets, peering through telescopes and a 3D tour of mars. These were just some of the activities and exhibits at the annual open house for the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at M&#257;noa, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifa.hawaii.edu\/\">Institute for Astronomy<\/a> (<abbr>IfA<\/abbr>). Organizers say the free community event, held every April, has two goals.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;One is to let the community know that <abbr>UH<\/abbr> has this incredible astronomy institute right here in everyone&#8217;s backyard,&rdquo; said Roy Gal, the <abbr title=\"Institute for Astronomy\">IfA<\/abbr> outreach coordinator. &ldquo;And the other is to get kids interested in <abbr>STEM<\/abbr> fields&#8212;science, technology, engineering and math&#8212;and show them, it&#8217;s not just equations and boring but actually a lot of fun and a lot of cool things going on.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The more than two-dozen exhibits and activities are designed to give kids of all ages, and adults, a hands-on experience in astronomy.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;So we were putting air into the bottles with water to make it like explode,&rdquo; said elementary school student Luke Higashi, who came with his parents.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We&#8217;re going to make our own comets, like snowball, with dirt and sand over it,&rdquo; said younger brother Troy.<\/p>\n<p>The open house, which averages about 1,300 people a year, gives <abbr>UH<\/abbr> educators and students a chance to share their knowledge and passion for astronomy and science.<\/p>\n<p>The Fun with Physics activity demonstrated angular momentum. <abbr>UH<\/abbr> physics undergraduate student Anthony Sarria explains.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It does everything from making sure that your bike stays up while you are riding it all the way to making sure the galaxy keeps its shape,&rdquo; said Sarria.<\/p>\n<p>There are also talks and presentations by faculty and researchers, who are among the best in their fields; along with movies, stargazing and the exhibits and activities. All presented in a way that makes learning about astronomy fun.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Everything from the theory, to the experts, to the practice, you get the whole experience,&rdquo; said Sarria.<\/p>\n<p>And you get this experience from an internationally recognized department. <abbr>UH<\/abbr>&#8217;s Institute for Astronomy is the largest, university astronomy department in the country that brings in an average of 20 million dollars a year in research funds from outside the state. It attracts the top minds in the field, performing an amazingly wide variety of research, thanks to <abbr>UH<\/abbr>&#8217;s access to all of the telescopes on Haleakal&#257; and Mauna Kea.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We have hundreds of kids go through our intro to astronomy classes that get to use our telescopes here,&rdquo; said Gal. &ldquo;And produce great <abbr title=\"doctor of philosophy\">PhD<\/abbr> students going on to some of the best careers in astronomy out there.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Chances are, you will find some of those future <abbr title=\"doctor of philosophy\">PhD<\/abbr> candidates at the Institute for Astronomy Open House, each year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Activities and exhibits attract kids and families to the the annual open house of the Institute for Astronomy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,12],"tags":[34,35,313,9,56],"class_list":["post-15928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-video","tag-astronomy","tag-institute-for-astronomy","tag-stem","tag-uh-manoa","tag-video-2","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15928"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130210,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15928\/revisions\/130210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}