Brittany Romero Dr.

Barnes PHYS-1040-010 11/13/2013

Astronomy Conversation
Doomsday is coming, take cover! I know you are probably laughing at me right now because I know I am not the first one to cry wolf as of late. Not to mention that the end of the Mayan calendar was just a huge fau pas. !e could always get into a more realistic world ending situations such as nuclear war, a "ombie apocalypse, or an alien invasion. #till laughing$ !ell actually, the last scenario is closer to the topic that my friends and I discussed for my astronomy conversation. My conversation was about a few ways the world could possibly come to an end in an astronomical view. %hese topics consisted of the runaway effect of greenhouse gasses heating our planet to an e treme, a large enough meteorite hitting &arth, and with a matter of if, but when our sun will come to the end of its life, putting &arth in a inhabitable hot "one. %he conversation took place in the evening at my house on #aturday, 'ctober (). I invited my friends Nicole, *layton, +reanna, and ,le . It was a no brainer to choose the people I did. Nicole, who I am grateful to call my best friend, is a feminist who believes in science. I knew she would be a great candidate because she has strong opinions and knowledge on basically everything, naturally, because she is a five year college student. #he is going to be applying for medical school to become a surgeon, all while just barely turning twenty-one. *layton, Nicole.s boyfriend, is also a college student. /e was raised in a Mormon household, although he does not currently practice his parent.s beliefs. +reanna is a college student, while ,le , her boyfriend, is not continuing his education at the moment. +oth of them do not have a

Brittany Romero Dr. Barnes PHYS-1040-010 11/13/2013

religious preference. I was happy with the diversity among the people I chose and I knew it would make for a great conversation. !e met together for about three hours, but the astronomy portion lasted roughly for an hour and forty minutes. Not much persuading was needed to get them to come since we are all good friends and meet together often, although, I did entice them with food and drinks. #ince my boyfriend works at Domino0s, he was able to get us some cheap, but delicious, pi""a. I thought it was fitting because pi""a is the staple of every college student.s diet. During the rest of the duration of the time we spent together, my friends would bring up some funny or fully thought through ideas about astronomy as our conversation soaked in more. %o prepare for the conversation I gathered facts and wrote them on flash cards. I also looked up and printed off some articles pertaining to my topics, for everyone to read when they got there. ,fter the articles were read, the conversation took off. 1or the most part, the conversation went as planned. It flowed naturally with a balance of opinionated concerns and thoughts, to jokes about the "ombie apocalypse being an option of the &arths despair. ,lthough we strayed from the topic a few times, I feel that the jokes made the conversation less lecturing and dull, to more e citing and lively. %he last thing I would have wanted was for the conversation to sound like a +en #tein eye drop commercial. !hat surprised me most about the conversation was at how fun and self-fulfilling it was to switch roles and be the teacher instead of being the student. I was apprehensive at first when knowing that I would have to e plain to my friends the step-by-step processes on how parts of

Brittany Romero Dr. Barnes PHYS-1040-010 11/13/2013

the universe work. ,lso I was surprised that everyone, but Nicole, knew very little about astronomy. Most were not aware that 2'ur almighty #un, is just a regular star2 as put in +reanna0s words. If I were in the position to have the astronomy conversation again, I would consider sending the articles in an email to my friends so that my friends could prepare and write down their thoughts and 3uestions before we got together. %his may have made the conversation stay on topic a little better. ,lthough I do still like the way my conversation turned out because I feel that everyone was able to read the articles and give their immediate thoughts on the topics. ,t the end of the conversation, ,le joked about the ne t time we get together we should reenact one of the 4immy Dean commercials where all of the people are dressed up as planets in our solar system and eat breakfast sandwiches, while orbiting the #un. Maybe ne t time we will have to try that... but without the costumes and just the breakfast sandwiches! !hen Nicole was leaving, she said that it didn.t even feel like we were doing a school assignment for me and that is e actly how I wanted my guests feel. 'verall, with all of the laughs, I could tell that my friends left, having learned a lot of new things about astronomy and had a genuinely good time.