Alabama's STEM explorers is made possible by the generous support of Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology.

Southern research solving the world's hardest problems, the Holle Family Foundation, Alabama Works.

Alabama STEM Council, Alabama Mathematics, Science, Technology and Engineering Coalition for Education, Alabam Math, Science and Technology Initiative.

Hey, Neal, do you need any help?

Hey, Nilah, I'm just cleaning up the lab, but you can throw those paper towels away.

OK?

She shoots, she scores.

Hey, nice work.

Well, part of it is my skills, and part of it is gravity.

I remember when we studied gravity a few years ago, and it's gravity that made those paper balls fall into the trash can.

You know what they say is true?

What goes up must come down, right, at least here on planet Earth.

But do you know why gravity?

Yeah.

But what do you remember about gravity?

Well, I know that gravity is here on Earth, because if it wasn't, we'd all be floating in space.

Gravity keeps us on solid ground.

And do you remember where gravity comes from?

Not really.

I know somebody who can answer that.

Hi, I'm Nilah and Neil, and I are in these really cool flight suits and I want to keep mine.

We're here at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and we're talking with Joseph, the director of education.

Joseph Nolen.

I've been talking a little bit about gravity and the effects that gravity has on across the different planets in our solar system and on our own body.

Could you walk us through a little bit more about gravity Absolutely.

Let's go on our space adventure So, Nilah we have in front of us here what's called a gravity Well, and it's going to demonstrate for us wha the space around us, what our solar system, how it looks from a different perspective.

So all things are made of matter, including you and me Yes, and matter is anything that takes up space and has mass.

So hold on to that for a little while.

Notice yeah.

It takes up a little bit of space in your hands.

So it's it's it's got a little heft to it, but weight isn't mass what we're used to.

His weight and weight is a product of mass times gravity, but mass is the quantitative amount of stuff that's in an object.

Okay, so that would represent our sun So our sun is the center of our solar system, the largest mass, and it takes up 99% of all of our solar system.

So if you could, for me, set that in the very center of our gravity, well, this black fabric represents the fabric of space time so noticed as you place that large mass representing our sun in the center.

What happened?

The fabric seemed to like cave in.

Yes.

So we had a jet or a well.

Now this represents gravitational influence so that mass and gravity working together.

So what is gravity?

So gravity is a question that we've asked for a long period of time, all different scientists and even us.

Yeah, gravity has to do with the bending.

Gravity is a force.

A force is any push our pull on an object.

Now notice the fabric is pushed or pulled with that large mass, it's being pulled downwards.

So with that sort of fabric.

So that represents 99% of the mass in our solar system The rest are the planet.

So I have a big blue marble representing Earth pulled out of my pocket.

That's part of the 1%.

All the planets, all of the asteroids, even you and me are part of that remaining 1%, right?

So I'll give you that marble there representing Earth But we're going to see the influence of different masses where we have the largest mass and a smaller mass earth representing a smaller mass, and we're going to see how they interact in an orbit together.

So try they're at the edge and make an orbit for me and observe very nice as it's orbiting notice.

It goes through that well and through that fabric kind of made like an oval.

So absolutely that oval shape we call an eclipse an elliptical orbit.

So let's take the Earth again and do that one more time, and we'll do an observation notice as it's orbiting.

The closer it gets to the Sun, it sort of pushes outer slingshots away.

That's because that larger mass has a larger amount of gravitational force and push out against the smaller mass, causing it to quickly push outward lets you do that elliptical orbit one more time.

But also notice when it gets close to that larger mass, there's a little wobble.

Yeah.

Not only the wobble with the smaller mass, but with the larger mass too.

Yeah, both masses are influenced with one another's gravity.

Us sitting here have gravity too you're pushing on me with your gravity and I'm pushing on you with your gravity.

But we're so small of a mass we don't feel or see that influence.

Yeah, but larger masses like planetary bodies or suns, we can physically see that with its orbit and this gravity well.

So let's do that one more time and do a major focus on that wobble.

Again, we go, Yes, with that movement, we see that elliptical shape that oval.

Then we see that wobble there with those two masses and that influence.

And it's all due to mass and gravity interaction.

And with this mass and gravity interaction that ha to do with bigger planets, bigger push, and we'll see that a little bit later with our next activity.

When I was young, of course, I was a little too young to experience the moon landing first hand.

But I grew up knowing about it and being intrigued by the thought of going into space.

My fifth grade term paper was on Wernher von Braun and his German rocket team that came to Huntsville, Alabama.

So I guess you could say I was very interested early on.

I just did not realize that I could be a part of it until much later in life.

Well, I'm so happy to report that nowadays, much more so than when I was young.

The world is opened up and STEM is something that is very important across our nation.

People understand the influence that STEM education can have on developing people and on our nation as a whole and what it can do.

So more so than when I was growing up, where people were more, more encouraged to pursue traditional careers.

Nowadays, there's a lot more that's opening open up to everyone of all shapes, sizes and colors.

Whether you know, if you're interested in STEM or not, try it.

The best thing to do is to just talk with someone in the in that field or look into what's available.

But whatever you can dream and imagine, it can be yours.

So I just encourage everyone to pursue their passions, whatever makes them happy, whatever, if they're given a blank assignment and they can pick something of their own choosing.

Think about that.

What do you choose and why?

And then once you do go into it further and see if there might be something in it that holds an interest for you?

So now earlier, we focused on how mass and gravity they interact with one another inside the gravity well So the larger the mass, the more influence it has with gravity pushing and pulling out.

So we're going to showcase that with our Solar System model.

So I have these models as reference for sort of color and representation of what we have in our Solar System.

But we have here are scale distance model on the table.

So we're going to do a scale, which means we're gonna need to do some math.

So I really like math.

Do you like this?

I love that.

All right.

So with that, our scale is where we have ten centimeters on our scale.

Represented with our meter stick here represents one a.u.

Okay.

And one A.U.

is equal to 150 million kilometers.

Wow.

And that is the same distance from the Sun to our planet earth.

OK.

So all of the others I've arranged in a chart behind us so we can have this math at our fingertips.

So we have here all of the planets lined up and there are a few distances here.

So first, planet is mercury at point for a you, and we're going to need to multiply that by a unit of ten.

OK, so we're going to move easily.

Our decimal point over cause point four times ten would be one unit movement over two, four, seven or centimeters.

So we're going to do that multiplication of units of ten with each one of our A.U.

distances and then showcase it with our model on our table.

So first, let's go ahead and move Planet Mercury, our first planet to four centimeters.

And I'll put Mercury there.

Represented first planet on our next planet is Venus at 77 centimeters.

That is our yellow bead.

I'll place Venus right aligned there with our planet.

Our next.

Our third planet is our home where we live.

Earth, represented with our ten centimeter unit set that one aligned there with that bead and then our fourth planet is Mars at 15 and 15 centimeters.

Our Red Planet, our red bead, place that one in line there.

So we have this grouping of terrestrial planets and noticed they're closer together.

Yeah, see that.

So their masses aren't as large as the planets we're about to move to so they can have a closer proximity to one another.

In perspective, they're still millions of sort of distance apart in scale, but still at our scal model, you can see there is a slight difference.

So the next we have our asteroid belt and it's represented at what distance?

28, 28 centimeters.

So we'll move.

That is our black bead.

And it put in perspective for how wide it is.

The entire asteroid belt happens to be one.

AU in length are in width in our solar system.

So that's 150 million kilometers and that's a lot of asteroid has.

So we're moving to our largest planet in our entire solar system.

The king of the planets Jupiter at 52 centimeters.

So you'll see there's quite a distance out from this one.

And I will place the king of the planets right there.

And it actually does a lot of gravitational influenc and push throughout our entire solar system.

Now our next planet, we have Saturn at 96 centimeters.

And there is a greater distance between Saturn and Jupiter here because of their masses.

So we have our gas giants in place, so our next planet happens to be Uranus and its distance is 192 centimeters.

So we'll need to do a little bit of movement here with our meter stick.

Excellent.

So let me place Uranus here, and then we have one remaining planet, the most distant planet Neptune at 300 centimeters, at 300 centimeters in distance from the Sun.

Wow, that's a lot.

That is quite a distance.

And you can see the larger masses have influenc and pushing and pulling outward with that gravitational pull and distance And this happens to be our solar system and our home right there at the front.

But with this, this is just a tabletop view you're about to experience in our intuitive planetarium a close, in-depth view of the planets and traveling through the Solar System.

You have an adventure ahead of you.

I have always been interested in exploration.

So ever since I can remember, I really liked exploring and particularly this whole realm of the unknown with space, and that was really the desired goal was to become an astronaut and to be able to explore further things that people neve had never done before and never discovered before.

And so I guess from that young age, I've always been interested in trying to learn more about the world around me and even more around the world, the Solar System and beyond.

As far as space is concerned, again, that's sort of the next, the next frontier that we're starting to get more and more and more access to .

And as far as how that translated into a career path, I always wanted to be an astronaut and I didn't quite know how to go about that.

I figured if I studied something hard, science wise, like physics, that might get me in the right direction.

All of our programing here at the internal planetarium is produced in-house.

We are taking real data from NASA, from other space agencies, from scientists all around the world.

And generally we're taking the already processed products.

But we are doing further visualization with these products to create immersive and interactive visualizations that we can fly around interactively in the planetarium so that we can bring the the data in a rawer form to the public in a way that is visually compelling.

That's educational.

And, you know, just a pretty unique experience quite honestly.

So we use STEM in every aspect of that.

It also becomes a very high entertainment facto as well because this data is very, very pretty, especially if you know how to process it the right way.

Hi, my name is Savi, and I was wondering, why do we sometimes see the Moon in the daytime since those twelve hours almost never coincide, roughly with twelve hours of daylight and every 24 hours?

The possible window for observing the moon in daylight averages about six hours a day.

The moon is visible in daylight nearly every day.

The exceptions being close to a new moon when the moon is too close to the sun to be visible and close to a full moon when it's only visible at night the best times in a month to say the moon and daylight are close to first and last quarter, when the moon is 90 degrees away from the sun in the sky.

When we see the moon during the day, it's because the moon is in the right spot in the sky as reflecting enough light to be as bright or brighter than the sky itself I'm still at the Space and Rocket Center, and I'm here with David, the director of the planetarium Thank you for being here.

We've been talking about scale of the Solar System and I think it's really powerful to think about even though planets are so, so, so big.

You know, when we put them in context in the Solar System and we look at the Solar System as a whole as we're doing right now, you can't even see them right because they're just so far apart and it is literally astronomical in scale.

Pun intended.

So as we start to zoom in, I'd like to take us to everyone's favorite planet Mars, of course.

Oh, true, that's my favorite planet.

Perhaps the Earth is pretty good, too.

But as we start to, you know, attempt to send humans further out into space, the moon, of course, is our next logical place to revisit .

But our first attempt at going to visit other planets is going to be Mars.

So I figured we'd zoom in for a little bit closer of a look.

And as we're zooming in, we're we're traveling much, much, much faster than the speed of light because, well, we have to at these scales in order to get anything reasonable , you know, for us to visualize for audiences.

So as we start to cruise in a little bit, we're going to notice a few things about Mars.

Do you see what color it is like?

An orange red kind of looks like there's a little bit of yellow at the bottom, like an ombré of colors.

Yeah, that's that's a fantastic description.

And I think often people think about Mars as being sort of red and associate that red with hot, but it really isn't, you know, it's a quite chilly place.

And so that's one of the definitely and it's actually one of the big challenges that we're going to face when we send astronauts to Mars in the future.

And do you notice the anything, you know, big feature wise that we've come up on right now I'm noticing like a bunch of big dots or big spots on the.

Planet.

Definitely, definitely.

Have you heard of the largest volcano in our solar system?

Oh, not that I know of.

OK, so Olympus Mons, is this this huge feature on the sort of upper left here?

And it is the largest volcano in our solar system.

It's got the next three largest right next to it there.

That is sort of three in a line.

And Mars, even though it's a good bit smaller than the Earth, is actually home to some very huge, huge features.

Interesting.

Now, one of those is actually coming into view right now, and this sort of kind of looks like a like a scar, I guess right off the surface.

And this is a huge rifting event that occurred a long time ago on Mars and formed essentially the Grand Canyon of Mars, which is called Valles Marineris.

But it's far grander than the Grand Canyon in that it stretches about as long as the entire United States.

What?

Well, that's cool.

That's crazy.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely.

So you want to go in for a closer look?

We can do that.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

So let's journey into the sort of upper region of an upper offshoot chasm.

I guess you could say this is canedor kasama.

And as we start to head in, I think it's important to realize that the imagery that we're looking at of Mars here is all real.

And right now, we're looking at a dataset that's nice and colorful, but not particularly high in resolution.

And so we can bring in some High-Resolution imagery overlaid.

And this imagery is all from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which is orbiting Mars as we speak and is capable of taking incredible pictures of the surface that we can then project onto elevation map that we build, also from data from that same spacecraft.

So as we start to cruise closer down to the surface, you can see that candor kasama is just like, it's just rugged, right?

I mean, it's a it's a really tumultuous looking place, pretty different than outside of the rockets.

I think.

But do you notice anything in particular about the the terrain here?

Um, I just see a lot of bumps and like almost mountains and then like craters on the top of the mountains.

Yeah, great.

Great observations.

I think the mounds themselves are very intriguing here because if you think of, well, probably wherever you live, it doesn't look like this for a variety of reasons.

And these mounds are actually the result of something that happened far back in the history of Mars When Mars was a much, much wetter place, some three, three and a half billion years ago, lakes actually filled in some of these low lying areas within Valles Marineris, and that lake water actually would have pushed around dirt sediment and sort of formed these mounds, which were then later eroded by the very, very thin wind of Mars .

Sort of pushing all this, this dirt around and forming some of these sand dunes that we can see here.

And I guess the last thing I'd like to point out with this is that scale is so hard to to get a sense of right.

We talked about that with the Solar System and planets being so big yet even further away from each other.

And when you go to a different world, it's pretty hard to gaug how big things are.

So we've gone to the liberty of plopping down some Saturn fives and you just stood underneath the Saturn five.

And you know, that's a pretty inspiring experience.

This is 363 feet tall.

Wow.

And you can see what they look like compared to some of these mountains.

So these are skyscraper tall mounds in the hundreds of feet tall and that cliff face in the background, there is somewhere around 14,000 feet that's as tall as the highest peaks in the Rockies.

Pretty dramatic landscapes.

I couldn't imagine being that tall.

Right, all right, so if you were if you were standing on the surface, some of these sand dunes you can see in the foreground, these are, you know, about 50 to 75 feet from peak to big something like that.

Pretty amazing.

So I think it gives you a nice perspective, a very unique perspective when we look at the surface of Mars.

You know what, what different worlds look like And also some of the amazing technological capabilities that we have here at the intuitive planetarium.

David, thank you so much for having us at this intuitive planetarium.

We cannot wait to come back.

Thank you so much for joining us.

You are always welcome.

Thanks for watching.

Alabama's STEM Explorers If you missed anything or you want to watch something again, you can check out our website at Alabama STEM Explorers dot org.

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Feel free to send us a video question or an email on our website.

Alabama STEM Explorers dot org.

Thanks again for watching.

We'll be back next week.

Alabama's STEM Explorers is made possible by the generous support of the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology, translating the power of genomics into real world results.

Southern Research solving the world's hardest problems the Holle Family Foundation established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holley and his parents, Evelyn and Fred Holley, champions of servant leadership Alabama works a network of interconnected providers connecting business and industry needs to a highly skilled and trained workforce.

Alabama STEM Council dedicated to improving STEM education, career awareness and workforce development across Alabama.

Alabama Mathematics, Science, Technology and Engineering Coalition for Education advocating for exceptional STEM education in Alabama.

Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative, the Alabama Department of Education's initiative to improve math and science teaching statewide.