Katie Baird

Phys 1040

November 20, 2014

Astronomy Conversation

For this conversation, I chose to have it with my mother, brother, and sister, since it was
convenient because we all live in the same house and we never really have to have a set time to
discuss things, or travel to be in each others company. I enjoyed being able to have an
conversation with my family about astronomy; we dont often have deep in thought
conversations, so I enjoyed being able to see what some of my family members find interesting
about astronomy, black holes, stars, and gravity. While I planning to have this conversation, I
told my family the different topics we would be discussing in a couple of days so that they could
really ponder about each subject, and be able to give really interesting thoughts when it
became time for us to discuss them.

The day of our discussion, we talked for about an hour and a half, at around 6:00p.m. in
our family room. My mother and sister had really interesting comments, but unfortunately, my
brother didnt have a whole lot to say because he forgot that we would be having this
conversation and didnt prepare anything to talk about. So the conversation didnt quite as I

hoped that it would, but I still enjoyed having this time to converse astronomy with my family.
My family thought it was interesting that this would be my paper assignment for this semester
in this class, but they were definitely willing to help me out, as they always are. At the end, we
discussed how we didnt know that one another knew so much (or so little) about astronomy,
and the different beliefs that we have about why certain things occur in space. I believe that at
least my mother and sister enjoyed the conversation, but my brother felt kind of out of the loop
since he didnt prepare himself for the conversation (even though I bothered him about it
multiple times a day).

It surprised me how much my sister really knew about astronomy. One of the first things
she said was Our bodies are made up of the same molecules that make up stars, so we are
basically made out of stardust. I thought this was really interesting to ponder; it made me think
about how if we are made up of the same molecules as stars, how many different possibilities of
life form there may be out there in different galaxies, and maybe they are also made out of the
same molecules as stars, or maybe they are even made out of the same molecules as comets,
asteroids, or other things in outer space; the possibilities are endless.

Gravity was probably my favorite topic that we discussed. I really enjoyed seeing what
each member of my family knew about gravity. My mother and sister talked about how it keeps
us to the ground, is caused by the spinning of planets and also the mass of our planet, and that is
why you can weigh less on different planets, my mom jokingly said she wants to move to Mars
so she can weigh less, even though it would probably equal out once she has to wear all the
astronaut equipment to be able to live there. My brother only spoke about how he knows that it is

a scientific theory, and that Isaac Newton discovered it. We thought it was pretty hilarious how
little my brother knew about astronomy, so hopefully he was enlightened by our conversation.

My sister knew so many things about stars, while the rest of us knew very little, and if it
wasnt for this class, I wouldnt know what I do now about stars at all. Her list of things she
knew about stars included- they come in different sizes depending on how old they are, there is a
certain place where stars are born, not all stars have planets that orbit them, constellations, the
majority of them are bigger than our sun, and if the sun was the size of a beach ball, then Jupiter
would be the size of a golf ball. I really enjoyed her comments and we also discussed what our
favorite things are about stars and why they are so important to us. We also talked about black
holes and how cool/scary it would be to experience one. My sister had to also make a note how
Star Wars light speed could happen if we could just pop out black holes out of nowhere. I loved
my sisters silly comments, and my mom would try to be funny and act like she knew nothing
about astronomy and at the beginning of each new topic she would just say one of the following;
they are prettyIve never hear of thoseI like stars, you can see them at night.

If I had to go about this assignment again, the thing I would most likely do differently is
to ponder it more, set up more questions and think of a list of things I would have liked to know
the opinions about from my family, and just try to get my family to think more about what they
really know, and what they believe about astronomy. We discussed how in our class book The
Essential Cosmic Perspective, it discusses how the writers of the book believe that the world
began with the Big Bang, and how my family personally does not believe in the Big Bang, and
why we believe that is not at all what occurred; I enjoyed being able to talk about our beliefs. I
enjoyed doing this assignment.

Works Cited

Bennett, Jeffrey, Megan Donahue, Nicholas Schneider, and Mark Voit. "Developing
Perspective." The Essentail Cosmic Perspective. 7th ed. San Fransico: Pearson Education, 2013.
525. Print.