Jacob+Getting+Serious+about+the+Sun

I attended Getting serious about the sun on November 3rd at the Daily Planet Cafe. The guest speaker was Dr Treuthardt who is the Assistant Head of Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The event lasted for about an hour, and after the presentation, there was time to ask Dr Treauthardt about the presentation. After the presentation, we also did an activity where we decorated a sugar cookie with cinnamon drops, Twizzlers, and colored sugar which represented sunspots, solar flares, and convection currents of the photosphere.

During the presentation, Dr Treauthardt taught us general information about the sun and focused on things such as sunspots, solar flares, convection currents, and the aurora lights. I was most interested when he talked about the Carrington event, which was a massive solar storm in 1859 which was recorded by a British astronomer named Richard Carrington. Dr Treauthardt explained to us that even though these massive solar storms or very rare, if it happened today we would lose GPS, cell phone reception, and the power grid and the cost to fix all that damage would be trillions of dollars. This was very interesting to me because it showed how much one solar storm could affect the entire world.

I learned from this event general information about the sun and other interesting info such as aurora lights, the Carrington event, and the Quebec Blackout of 1989. These types of events are targeted at teens and are important because teens should learn more about science. This relates to Apes because the sun supports life and is essential to many things such as the hydrological cycle, photosynthesis, and solar energy is also a renewable source of energy.