Ali Narimani is a astronomy graduate student at UBC. Ali facilitates the labs we run in our introductory “Astro 101” course. While developing an activity about the motion of the Sun across the sky, we were trying to figure out why students should care about predicting the equinox. Ali excitedly said, “…because of Persian New Year!” He’s a great TA who cares about helping students learn and about his Persian culture. He emailed this story of Persian New Year to all the astronomers in our Department on Sunday, March 20, 2010, the day of the Vernal Equinox. With his permission, I’m posting it here.

[Update March 19, 2012: This post was originally published March 20, 2010. In 2012, equinox occurs on March 20 at 05:14 UT]

Persian New Year is celebrated at spring equinox of the northern hemisphere. Today at 4:20pm, we will start our new year which is also the first year of a new decade. Our new year does not start at a certain time of the day each year, but we should tune ourselves for the moment of equinox. (which is on March 20th at around 4:20pm, this year)

Tradition:

Traditionally, member of the family sit around a table called “Haft-Sin”, meaning “Seven S”, some minutes before the start of the new year and pray for a healthy, wealthy, and happy year. The table is called Seven-S because there should be 7 different objects on the table starting with the consonant S:

Sprouts (Sabzeh) : is a symbol of *rebirth*
Apple (Sib) : is a symbol of *beauty*
Garlic (Sir) : is a symbol of *health*
Coin (Sekke) : is a symbol of *wealth*
Silverberry (Senjed) , is a symbol of* love*
Vinegar (Serke) : is a symbol of age and *patience *
A very Sophisticated Persian Cuisine (Samanou)

I have attached a picture of this table:

7sin — The table called "Haft-Sin", meaning "Seven S"

Right after the new year time, the usual part of celebration is hug and kiss, and the most fun part for the kids is to receive their new year gifts. New year holiday lasts for 13 days and during this period members of the big family (including all Aunts & Uncles) go to each other’s place for a visit. Younger members should visit elders first. The fun part of these short visits is that everyone wears nice new clothes, and again the kids receive some gift from their aunts and uncles. (the definition of Kid is a little vague in here since my grandmother still likes to give some “new year money”, kept in Quran for a couple of days for holiness, to my 65 year old father as new year gift).

Dance:

I have attached two traditional Persian dances:

Bests

Ali Narimani
Department of Astronomy and Physics
University of British Columbia

Another day of agile teaching

March 21, 2011

Peter Newbury

The prof I’m working with in our introductory #astro101 class at UBC surprised me today. I thought he was sabotaging a teachable moment when in fact, he pulled one of the most “agile” moves he’s made yet. Here’s the story:

Today is March 21, 2011, the first full day of Spring. The vernal equinox occurred yesterday, March 20 at 4:21 PDT. The instructor, let’s call him H, started today’s class with a clicker question:

The correct answer is A) but I fully expected a bunch of students to vote B), confusing the “going North” and “going South” for the Sun’s motion along the ecliptic.

The students thought, then voted. H looked at the results and said (I’m paraphrasing from memory),

The correct answer is A. 70% of you said that…

Oh, no, I thought to myself. He just gave away the answer and the success rate – only 70%, not terrific – and totally short-circuited the teachable moment that comes via peer instruction.

That thought took about 1 second, of course, so it was all over by the time H continued with

…Very few of you said B, C, or D and 30% said E. Let me show you one slide and then I’ll come back to the super moon.

SuperMoon_gmarkham — The "super Moon" as seen from Vancouver. (Credit @gmarkham, used with permission.)

You see, there was another event this past weekend. The full Moon occurred near perigee, the point in the Moon’s orbit around the Earth when it is closest. This means we had a full Moon, closer than usual, so it appeared bigger. Super, even. Oh, and it was.

So, here I was, getting alarmed that H was missing the opportunity for the students who voted A) to convince the students who voted B) to change their answers. But that’s not what happened at all. Hardly anyone voted B. They either knew the right answer A) or were more interested in the astronomy-in-real-life super Moon event. And H agilely, er, with great agility, confirmed the correct answer and followed up with an something 30% of the students cared about. He talked about the full Moon, how it was 14% bigger and 29% brighter. Not twice as big – don’t believe everything you hear on TV. That’s slightly bigger and closer than usual but not much. And no, the super Moon did not cause the earthquake in Japan.

Wow. I was impressed. He had the whole thing planned out but tailored his response based on theirs. Cool.

What about you? What teaching have you done, witnessed or experienced that shows agility?

#eqjp, a teachable moment

March 11, 2011

Peter Newbury

astro 101 communicating science 2 Comments

In my current assignment through the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative in Physics and Astronomy at UBC, I’m working closely with a senior astronomy professor to help him better teach his general-education “Astro 101” course. It’s a mixture of providing resources, mentoring, helping him clarify what he wants the students to learn, and coaxing (sometimes dragging – he’s a great sport!) his teaching to a learner-centered approach.

Today was supposed to be the first class in the last, big section of the course, comparative planetology. That is, the characteristics of the planets and other bodies in our Solar System and, more importantly, what their similarities and differences tell us about the formation of Solar System some 4.5 billion years ago. Traditionally, one follows the textbook’s lead. Chapter 10: Mercury. Chapter 11: Venus,… Chapter 15: Saturn,… Chapter 20: Other Crap, Chapter 21: [finally!] Formation. And by this time, nobody remembers Mercury, Venus, or gives a damn. I’m glad to say we long ago scrapped that approach and instead, focus on the gathering and analyzing the evidence that points to a single formation event. Our learning goal states that a student will be able to

deduce from patterns and properties of the planets, moons, asteroids and other bodies that the Solar System had a single formation event.

Where was I? Oh, right, teachable moment.

Last night (March 10), there was a massive earthquake in Japan. Magnitude 8.9, one of the biggest earthquakes recorded. The ensuing tsunami(s) devastated parts of Japan. I pay attention to these things, perhaps more than others, because my home, Vancouver, is on the list of places expecting The Big One. And we can be hit by tsunamis caused by earthquakes around the ring of fire. Thankfully, the west coast of Canada and the U.S. were spared this time.

It occurred to me, on the bus ride to work this morning, we could use last night’s earthquake in class today. Seismic activity tells us about the structure and evolution of the Earth. Similar signs of earthquakes and volcanoes on other planets, or lack thereof, tell us about their structure and evolution. Not seeing volcanoes on a planet is just as telling as seeing them. Using the earthquake to introduce this last arc in the course would set the tone for the next month of classes: we don’t care about the exact surface temperature on Mercury or the exact density of Neptune. We care about patterns in the physical properties of the planets. And we care about how we find, collate and reconcile those patterns.

Shortly after this “A-ha!” moment, my brain countered with, “Is this a teachable moment. Or are you exploiting the earthquake because you can’t think of an interesting way to teach comparative planetology?”

So I tweeted…

…and, as usual, was overwhelmed by the quick and intelligent response of the great tweeps who follow me. Thanks @TanyaCNoel, @penmachine, @snowandscience, @cpm5280, @derekbruff, @erinleeryan, @cosmos4u. The overwhelming advice was take advantage of the teachable moment:

Good idea. Understanding is always helpful.
teachable moment. everyone’s talking about it anyway…
Definitely a teachable moment

I’m also thankful to @ptruchon for putting words to something that bothered me:

Tough one…Do some of them have family in Japan? If so, are they ok?

So, I went for it. And by went for it, I mean I decided to convince the prof to use the earthquake in today’s class. I proposed he could run the “Earth’s Changing Surface” lecture-tutorial but he decided against it. Instead, he used the earthquake to segue from “here are the 3 or 4 key patterns that support a single formation event” to “how do we know all that, anyway?” Through open questions like, “What does the earthquake tell us about the structure of the Earth?” and “What does this picture [of Mars’ Olympus Mons] tell you about this planet?” he lead a nice discussion with the 170-or-so students in class today. Many students, men and women, from the front and the back of the lecture hall, participated.

A very successful class, in my opinion, one that demonstrated to me and himself and the students, how “agile” this prof is getting. I was proud that we were able to adapt our presentation so quickly and help the students learn about something they care about.

P.S. A special hat-tip to @cpm5280 who reminded me about that this earthquake was predicted, yes predicted, by the Super Moon wingnuts. I gave the prof a quick summary, just in case. And sure enough, at the end of class, a gaggle of students came down and asked him if he knew anything about the Moon being super-close on March 19. He hit them with a few, key scientific facts (in particular, that because gravity follows an inverse-square law, the tiny decrease in distance won’t do very much) and told them that the whole earthquake-prediction thing was, “a load of crap.” He used their language and they, like, totally got it.

Tradition:

Dance:

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