WC09 - "Field Trip to Wilcox Solar Observatory
Stanford University, California
Air Date: April 25, 2000
Hosted by Paul Mortfield
Students from Sarah Falk's classroom at Sandpiper Elementary School in Redwood
City, California, will visit the Wilcox Solar Observatory
at Stanford University. Students will share their experience seeing a large 75 foot spectrograph in action studying
the magnetic fields of the sun. This activity is a follow up to the previous show where they built their own working
spectroscopes to study the nature of light.
Solar Astronomer Dr. John Beck, from the Solar Oscillation Investigation team at Stanford University will guide the students through the various workings of the observatories 25 year history. Dr. Beck has been a visiting astronomer to this class as part of Project Astro. Dr. Beck will be on hand to answer students questions from the chatroom.
You can click on the image above to learn more about this image or get a FREE "Spectroscope" activity poster for your classroom. There are classroom activities and curriculum available below or check out the previous spectroscope broadcasts from April 6 & 7 in the NASA-Quest Archive.
To connect to the show, or view the archive
after the air date, connect to: NASA's
Learning Technologies Channel
- Solar Series.
Click on the grade Level to get the desired PDF file of activities for your class.
These classroom materials have been developed by NASA Curriculum Specialist, Susanne Ashby and Amberlee Chaussee.
| Grade Level | Curriculum / Class Activity |
| Grades 2-4 | The Sun is a Star. |
| Grades 5-8 | Build and use a Spectroscope |
| Grades 9-12 | Build and use a Spectroscope. The Doppler Affect. |
Return to 
Stanford SOLAR Center