Name of Assignment: Telescope Slideshow Subject: Physics Facilitator/Teacher: Mr. Murali
Description of Work/Assignment: The Telescope Slideshow explains the history, construction, and operation of the James Webb Telescope and the Hubble Telescope, and then compares the two. Which 21st Century Skill do you feel this assignment addresses, and why? This assignment addresses Global Awareness skills. The James Webb and Hubble Telescopes are both major scientific achievements; Hubble has made historic breakthroughs in its thirty years of operation, and James Webb is expected to continue that. This will have massive effects on science across the globe, so understanding these telescopes and how they work allows me to better understand the global impacts they have had and will continue to have.
What are you most proud of from this assignment, and why? I am most proud of the fact that I was able to discover unique and specific differences between the telescopes, such as the fact that Hubble passes through the South Atlantic Anomaly, while James Webb does not and is therefore more accurate.
How did you develop and/or improve upon your 21st Century Skill with this assignment? I improved my Global Awareness Skills by exploring a global topic that I was not familiar with previously.
What was most difficult about completing this task? The most difficult part of this task was figuring out how Hubble and James Webb worked, since there were a lot of very detailed, convoluted explanations and diagrams, and I had to break them in simpler parts in order to grasp the basic principles of each telescope.
How could you improve this work? If you could start over, what would you do different? If I could redo this assignment, I would explore the history of each telescope more. I mainly focused on the mechanical aspects of the telescopes, and I would have liked to find out more about what led to their construction and who was behind their designs.
How does this relate to what you have learned in the past? This assignment relates to what we have been learning about in physics for the past few months, which is the physics of mirrors and light.
How can you apply this to future learning? I can apply this to future learning by using the basic principles of how Hubble and James Webb work to understand the mechanics behind other telescopes, as well as use my understanding of the significance of these telescopes to analyze their impacts on the scientific world.