New Horizons soon to reach Pluto

NASA photo

New Horizons is the NASA space probe that was sent to study the surface of Pluto and its moons in a flyby mission launched 19 January 2006. It is expected to reach the surface of the planet in July 2015.

Since the spacecraft is now getting close enough to start sending back first-ever photos of the planet and surrounding planetary bodies, this will be a fascinating topic for my engineering students this coming semester (my spring semester is from February to June). There are so many interesting aspects of New Horizons - relating to both the spacecraft and the mission itself - that teachers of ESP will certainly find something for their students.

The Time magazine website has an article written by Alan Stern, the American planetary scientist who is the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission. This article is not only a clear and concise introduction to the topic, but also has a lot of useful language for the ESP classroom.

Link to the article: http://time.com/3645704/pluto-new-horizons-spacecraft/

The article has vocabulary relevant to distance, time, amount, speed and, of course, items in the semantic field of "space exploration." There are also useful vocabulary items of comparisons and superlatives. For example:

• too little is known
• very much the Everest of planetary exploration
• becoming the fastest spacecraft
• about 10 times more quickly than the Apollo spacecraft
• the equivalent to L.A. to New York in four minutes
• ventured farther ... to reach
• At its closest approach
• still both the brightest and largest one known
• the largest mapped structure
• three times as big

For a fairly short article, there are quite a few tenses used:

• present simple
• present perfect
• past simple
• past progressive
• future with will
• future with going to

The sentences with the past simple tense and the present perfect tense are good examples of the differences between the use of these two tenses - something my students find difficult to understand.

past simple tense:

•  The last time a spacecraft reached a new planet was during ... back in 1989.
• New Horizons already set records when it was launched in 2006 ...
• In 2003, the National Academy of Sciences ranked visiting the Pluto system ...
• Because in the 1990s, planetary astronomers discovered a vast structure ...

present perfect tense:

• I have had the privilege of leading ... since its inception 14 years ago ...
• No spacecraft has ever ventured farther ...
• Nothing like (it) has happened in a generation ...

In the article, Alan Stern mentions the questions about Pluto that the mission is expected to answer. These are not only useful for follow-up research work for students, but are also good examples of the variety of question forms in English:

• Does it have mountain ranges?
• Is its surface young or old?
• Are there polar ice caps?
• Might there be liquids on its surface or oceans in its interior?
• Could there be cloud decks in its atmosphere?
• Erupting geysers?
• Does it have more moons yet to be discovered?

He says, "We don't know the answers to any of these questions - but we should know all of them soon." These questions can be the basis of further work students could do to find the answers to these questions as the mission progresses.

For further work, there is also a New Horizons website (in conjunction with both NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory) with updates:

Home page: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/index.php

Alan Stern himself writes updates about the New Horizon mission here; the latest was on 23 January. Students can keep checking the updates here to learn about New Horizons' progress.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php?page=piPerspective_01_23_2015

On this particular update, he lists the objectives of the flyby as:

• Determine how Pluto's atmospheric pressure and temperature vary from the surface to high altitude.
• Determine the atmosphere's complete composition.
• Measure the atmospheric escape rate.
• Determine if Pluto has an ionosphere.
• Determine how Pluto's atmosphere varies from place to place, and with seasons and time of day.
• Search for an atmosphere at Charon.

Students can follow the progress of the mission by focusing on the particular area they are most interested in. In addition to (or instead of) these objectives, students can focus on the specific instruments and technology on the spacecraft - what they are, what their purpose is, and how they function.

In my next post I'll focus specifically on the technology of the payload on New Horizons - something that my robotics engineering and mechanical engineering students are particularly interested in.

Making students aware of their "Life on Earth"

Add your data

Your Life on Earth is an interactive feature on the BBC website. Enter data about your birth date, gender and height and you can see how various aspects of the world have changed since you were born.

The link: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141016-your-life-on-earth

From the website:

"Find out how, since the date of your birth, your life has progressed, including how many times your heart has beaten, and how far you have travelled through space.

Investigate how the world around you has changed since you've been alive; from the amount the sea has risen, and the tectonic plates have moved, to the number of earthquakes and volcanoes that have erupted.

Grasp the impact we've had on the planet in your lifetime; from how much fuel and food we've used to the species we've discovered and endangered."

The material comes from the archive of BBC shows and documentaries - many of which have example clips in the area below the display. The 3 areas focused on are "How you have changed," "How the world has changed," and "How we have changed the world."

As an example, a female student of mine who was born in 1988 and is 173 cm. tall (5`8") found out that:

• she has had 1 billion heartbeats in her lifetime so far (in comparison with a blue whale, whose heart would have beaten 83 million times or a hummingbird with 18 billion heartbeats);
• she would be 107 years old on Mercury, and her next birthday there would be in 17 Earth days from today - while on Jupiter she would be only 2 years old (with a birthday in 3,339 Earth days);
• she has been around the sun more than 25,037,712,000 km (constantly updating as you watch);
• a penguin her age would have had 5 generations by now, a rabbit 52 generations, a killer whale 1 generation, etc.;
• and that life expectancy has increased 5.7 years since she was born.

There are also data for other changes in the world and -- perhaps more importantly for our students -- how humans have changed the world.

These changes include:

• sea level and ocean pH levels;
• animals, fish and plants under threat of extinction;
• food and drink supplies per person;
• power supply;
• emission control;
• etc.

The area that most interested my students, and caused the most discussion, was Fuel Gauge: How old will you be when resources run out? For this student - and for many in this particular group - the answers were:

• oil - 79 years old
• coal - 81 years old
• gas - 139 years old

The reality that it will be a particular year in their lifetimes if nothing changes in the way we use resources - and the resources we use - was quite eye-opening for them. Although many felt that "something" would change before they reached that age, it still gave them a certain deadline to think about.

With other, younger, groups it could be even more revealing. This made the statistics and information about sustainability really have a personal meaning for my students.

Relevant Links

I've added a new feature to this blog: Relevant Links. It's located at the right, underneath Search This Blog. In the process of finding useful material, I often come across other blogs and websites that regularly add material that's interesting for those of us who teach English to engineers and engineering students - or to the engineers and students themselves.

My first link is: Engineering Ethics Blog.

Here's the link also: http://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.co.at/

The blogger has worked in industry and as an engineer, and is now a teacher of college-level engineering at an American university.

This is what he says in the section About the Engineering Ethics Blog:

"A good engineer both does things right, and does the right thing.  Doing things right is what engineers learn from the technical parts of an engineering education:  classes on differential equations, lab experiments that demonstrate how materials perform, and so on.  Doing the right thing, on the other hand, is not just a technical problem.  It has to do with questions like ‘Who will buy this product? What will they do with it?  Could it hurt anybody?  Was anyone treated unfairly during the development process?’

These types of questions draw upon more than technical knowledge (though technical knowledge is vital)—they test an engineer's character.  And these types of questions—questions about how to do the right thing and avoid the wrong thing in engineering—are what engineering ethics is about.”

He explains: “In this blog, I take a much broader view of engineering ethics, and deal with subjects as diverse as disasters that involve technical matters, movies with an engineering ethics or technical angle, and even philosophical and religious questions that engineers might have to deal with.”

Many of his posts might be rather long for students at a lower level, but for students who are able to read articles from such newspapers as The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times and Time magazine (which I've used on my blog), there shouldn't be a problem.

For teachers, there's useful material for creating lessons with discussions and research work. For example, in Popular Posts by Category there is a section "Disasters." In classes in Engineering Ethics, I've had students read about disasters involving engineering decisions or mistakes, and then discuss the implications for responsibility.

Other topics in this section are "Book reviews," "Engineering ethics (general)," "Humor," and "Movie reviews."

I wish he had more movies with an engineering or technical angle - he has only The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Prestige. In fact, The Bridge on the River Kwai is a film included in Engineering Ethics courses at my university (and it's great), but there are many more films that are also relevant to specific areas of engineering.

It would be interesting to get comments with ideas for films that illustrate some aspect of engineering ethics - and then I could write about them in a future post.

In the meantime, it's worthwhile to check out the Engineering Ethics Blog - for interesting reading and for useful material for teaching English to engineers.

Competition for Grand Challenges in Engineering

The 14 Grand Challenges

Engineering students will have a chance to compete alone or with colleagues by creating a video that focuses on achieving a "Grand Challenge." They'll not only have the satisfaction of receiving acknowledgement for their great ideas, but they can win a lot of money as well!

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is sponsoring a contest, Engineering for You 2 Video Contest, for which the grand prize is US$25,000.The competition opens in 2 days - 5 January 2015 - and the deadline is 2 March 2015 (noon U.S. Eastern Standard Time).

It is open to individuals or teams in the following four categories:

1. Middle School Students and Younger (grades K-8)
2. High School Students (grades 9-12)
3. Tertiary Education Students (2-year college through graduate school, part- or full-time
4. The General Public

The NAE has outlined 14 areas of what it calls "Grand Challenges for Engineering." Competitors must choose one or more of these challenges and then create and submit a 1- to 2-minute video "that shows how achieving one or more of the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering will lead to a more sustainable, healthy, secure, and/or joyous world!"

The information on NAE's website: https://www.nae.edu/e4u2/

The 14 Grand Challenges (in no particular order) are:

• Make solar energy economical
• Provide energy from fusion
• Develop carbon sequestration methods
• Manage the nitrogen cycle
• Provide access to clean water
• Restore and improve urban infrastructure
• Advance health informatics
• Engineer better medicines
• Reverse-engineer the brain
• Prevent nuclear terror
• Secure cyberspace
• Enhance virtual reality
• Advance personalized learning
• Engineer the tools of scientific discovery 

Students would certainly be motivated to create something and enter the competition. Even if they don't win, they'll come up with useful ideas and they'll certainly have great practice in language skills, teamwork and creativity. And if they win - well, there's the glory and some money!

More specific information about the videos is on the competition website:
http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/  

The winners and prizes will be announced in September 2015, and I'll give an update in another post then.