Torchbearer: Spring 1998

Eye To The Sky

HOW DO ASTRONAUTS go to the bathroom in space?

That's the question Paul Lewis hears most when he takes his traveling astronomy show to area public schools.

"Things like that make it fun," says Lewis, head of the UTK Astronomy Outreach program.

Lewis loves astronomy and wants to help others love it as well. He heads the observing program at UTK, connecting astronomy students with telescopes atop the Nielsen Physics Building. He also hosts two public viewing sessions on the roof each month and talks to about 50 school and civic groups a year.

Now he has spearheaded the creation of the Teacher Resource Distribution Center, a place where area teachers can obtain the best and most current astronomy materials for their classrooms.

"It's a place where teachers can look at and duplicate things like software programs, printed materials, lesson plans, and videotapes," Lewis says.

Five years in the making, the center provides teachers with hundreds of hours of videotapes, color slides including all the Hubble Telescope images, and tens of thousands more images from laser disks to duplicate on video. Schools pay only the cost of their own blank film, computer disks, and audio- and videotapes.

"They are license- and copyright- free," Lewis says. Two computers with Internet access, video and 35 mm slide duplicating equipment, and various globes are also available for use.

The materials are primarily those offered by the NASA CORE program, Lewis says. CORE, or the Central Operation of Resources for Educators, is a national distribution center that sells aerospace educational materials for a minimal fee.

Lewis modeled the center after similar ones at NASA facilities around the country. Teachers used to have to go to Huntsville to get these materials, he says. Now, all they need do is make an appointment at the center.

"They can come in and take all the time they want while I'm here," he says.

Funding for the center comes from the UTK physics and astronomy departments, the UTK Planetary Geosciences Institute, and NASA's Tennessee Space Grant Consortium.

Awareness of teachers' needs comes from Lewis' many visits to area elementary, middle, and high schools.

"I think it's especially important that we talk to kids in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades, because they're at an age where their receptors are on," he says. "They're curious and want to know things."

His philosophy is simple: "When I go to schools, I don't believe in just delivering a lecture. I get the kids involved and talk with them, not at them."

Lewis goes to schools armed with slides, demonstrations, and meteorites. His energetic and comic presentations show students that science can be fun.

"To me, it is fun," he says. "I think what's made the program successful is that I give them the opportunity to participate, not just listen to what somebody has to say."

The public viewing program has sparked a lot of interest in the school programs, he says. For 10 years on the first and third Friday nights of each month, the public has been invited to the physics building rooftop for viewings. Lewis sets up one to five telescopes, depending on the crowd.

With recent astronomical events, the roof has gotten quite crowded, he says.

"One night we had 1,500 people come to see the Hale-Bopp comet. They were lined up side by side down the stairwell to the fourth floor and out the door."

Lewis received "hundreds and hundreds" of phone calls concerning the comet. With two big comets in the last two years and six smaller ones since fall, he's been busy. Add to that several current NASA missions–Project Galileo to Jupiter, the Cassini Mission to Saturn, the Lunar Prospector to the Moon, and the Mars missions–and understand why interest in astronomy is at an all-time high.

"I love every minute of it," Lewis says. To him, watching a person at a telescope for the first time is the most fun of all.

"I look for the change of expression on their faces when they're seeing the craters on the moon or the rings of Saturn for the first time. There's that sudden gasp, or you'll hear `Omigod!' It's a hoot to hear people react to it."

Oh, and how do astronauts go to the bathroom in space?

Their toilets use flowing air instead of water to move waste through the system. Water is vented in space, and solids are stored onboard and removed at landing.

Return to Spring 1998 table of contents.





	Copyright ©2004 The University of Tennessee · Knoxville Tennessee 37996 · Telephone 865-974-1000 Voice/TDD