Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica
Yerkes Summer Institute 1999
CARA Space Explorers
Welcome! Tonight you begin an adventure that will be exciting and
informative. You’ll receive your tee shirts and these identify
you as a member of an elite group, THE WAVE MAKERS! Yes,
indeed. When you’re done, you will be an honest-to-goodness,
absolute, can’t-argue-with-that, wave expert!
(Well, anyway, you’ll know a lot more about waves than you do now.)
You will be rotating through labs where you can make all kinds of waves:
water waves, sound waves, and light waves. You will explore density
waves when you study far off galaxies, you’ll become
"ghost-busters" and "sun glass" experts.
You’ll "Slinky™
" waves, "Follow the Leader" waves, make a "human
wave" and crash waves. By the end of the institute, you’ll
even be able to wave bye-bye. (Okay, so some wave things you can
already handle, I’m just getting carried away with wave fever,
I guess.) Even your group names are based on waves. Of course, it
will be up to you wave experts to figure out what kind of waves
you are. So…
some of you will be the 
others will be the 
and last but not least the 
Get ready now to…
Institute Organization
Let’s talk about how we are going to go about our wavy
endeavors. We’ll look at several key components of
the institute and how they are organized.
Driving Questions
These are questions that drive the investigations that you are
going to be doing in each lab. As you work through each lab,
you will build an understanding of the concepts covered in each
of these questions. Your are responsible for constructing an
answer for each of these questions by the end of the institute.
One or more of the labs will help you reach this goal.
Questions like:
- What is a wave?
- What characteristics do all waves share? What characteristics
make them different?
- Where do you find waves in your everyday environment?
- How does what we know about waves help us explain our
physical world?
- How does what we know about waves help us
understand the universe?
- And what in the world do your team names, Heat,
Rocket, and Sonics, have to do with waves?
You will be given specific driving questions at the
beginning of the institute. Until then, think about some
of the questions above.
Labs
Labs are three hours long. You will meet for two hours and
then after your daily meals, another hour is provided for
further exploration, extensions, and/or related
investigations. This will give time to process the
information. There will be six day labs and three night labs.
Analysis Groups
Each of the three main groups will be divided into two sub-groups.
This will form the six analysis groups. Each day lab will
have one of these groups as their data analysts. In this group you
will gather the data from each team doing your lab. You will examine
that data, analyze the results, and come to some conclusion based on
those results.
Jig Saw Session
After your analysis group has come to some preliminary
conclusions about the data you have collected, you will have a
chance to share those findings with your peers in other analysis
groups. You will randomly be assigned letters of the alphabet.
Based on the letter you’re assigned, you will regroup with
students in other analysis groups that have the same letter as
you do. Each of you will share with those students the results
that your group has examined and any conclusion that you have
come to based on those results. Other members will listen to you
and ask questions, make comments, or suggest possible errors.
You will do the same for them when they share their group’s
findings. Following this you’ll return to your analysis
group and look at the results again thinking about remarks made
during the jig saw sessions.
Group organization visual
Presentations
Final presentations will be made to your parents on Thursday
evening and Friday morning. During these sessions you will
discuss what you did, what the results were, and any conclusions
that you were able to make (or explain why you couldn’t
come to a conclusion). You will then become the instructors so
your parents can perform some part of the lab. These sessions
will run longer than last year.
Written Artifact
You will, in your analysis group, prepare a written document
that explains, evaluates, and provides a lab rewrite that will
enhance future enactments of the lab.
You will be receiving additional information on each of these
components during the institute. Enjoy!
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Last modified Saturday, 11-Sep-1999 15:32:50 CDT
http://astro.uchicago.edu/cara/outreach/se/ysi/1999/intro.html
