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Second Years: Lesson Three; *Archived*
Topic Started: Mar 24 2018, 08:09 PM (99 Views)
Professor Sarah Harrington
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Mother of Two Girls | Astronomy Professor | HS Graduate Ravenclaw

[justify]Today Professor Harrington had planned a shorter lesson knowing that the previous lesson had been packed full. They were exploring the birth of the star, instead of the full length of a star's life she thought it would be nice to break down the life of a star. Students were beginning to enter and Sarah smiled at each student as they entered. She has rearranged the room so the desks were pushed to the side and the middle of the room was empty. "Welcome back everyone! I hope everyone has been doing well," she said with a smile to her students.

"Today we are going to be looking into the Birth of a star." With that Professor Harrington waved her wand and the room around them changed into space and the center of the room that had been cleared of desks featured the Horsehead Nebula. Obviously they were not really in space and the ground was firmly below them still. "Now stay in your seats, this is just a projection similar to the ceiling of the Great Hall." She moved towards the center where all the students would be able to see her. "Stars are born in giant gas clouds called nebulae. These are millions of times bigger than this projection. The gas clouds are a collection of gas in space. The gas itself is twenty-five thousand million million times thinner than air here on Earth, because the gravity is much much lower. Even so, there is enough gravity for bits of gas to come closer together. As the gravity pulls more, the blobs get smaller and also heat up. Eventually, they will get so hot and dense that nuclear reactions start inside them and they turn into stars. The heat and light from these newborn stars can make nebulae glow in different colors." Sarah told the students as the projection zoomed in and showed the students what she was describing. She loved magic.

"Most newborn stars are born together in clusters, over billions of years the stars begin to drift apart and become much more solitary, like our Sun. There are rare instances where multiple stars will pull on each other with gravity and begin their lives in a dance, rotating around each other." Pausing Sarah looked around the class as the projection ended. "The heart of a star can rach 16 million degrees, that's in Celsius in case any of you are from the United States. A grain of sand this hot would kill someone 150km away, just to put that degree into perspective." She smiled at the students. "Hopefully that will answer any questions of why we've never been to the surface of the sun before. Astronomers work out how big a star is from its brightness and from its temperature. The stuff of stars is called plasma, which is gas, or rather the atoms of gas stripped of electrons." This was all interesting and she couldn't believe they were coming to the end of the lesson already. "Well, it seems our time has ended, before you go feel free to take a look up at the stars in the sky tonight, we can see many now that the skies have cleared up," she said with a smile dismissing the class.

Homework:
RP the lessons and take notes
[/justify]Astronomy,2,2
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Professor of Astronomy
Years 1-7


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Stella Wright
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Space girl | SCIENCE! | optimist | dreamer | question everything

Astronomy this year had been good so far, and Stella was cautiously optimistic that it might remain that way. As a result, she gave Professor Harrington a sunny smile as she entered the classroom and took her customary seat at the front. It seemed odd to her to have a lesson so strongly focused as to only be about the birth of a star, but hopefully that would mean it contained a lot of detailed information.

Stella gasped as the room around them changed to show a beautiful illusion of the Horsehead Nebula. Now, that was more like what she wanted to see from a magical Astronomy class. This was extraordinary, and stunning. A wide grin on her face, Stella looked around, having some difficulty keeping her attention on the lecture with all this happening a round her. As far as she could tell, all the factual content was good, too. Although Stella did think she remembered her mum, a Chemistry professor, telling her some things about plasma that made it sound much more complicated. That was unsurprising, though; it had been one of Stella's frustrations for quite some time now that when people thought the truth was too complicated for a particular level of study they wouldn't say that, they would just pretend it was less complicated.

When the lesson ended, Stella quickly jotted down all the notes she could remember, having neglected to do so during class because the visuals were so mesmerising. She was pretty sure her notes were still thorough enough, but resolved to check them against the textbook later. For now, though, she enthusiastically took the opportunity to go stargazing.
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