The article, titled “Analyzing New Planetary Systems at School: Applications of Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation and Kepler’s Third Law,” presents a teaching sequence designed and implemented in Chile. This sequence uses real data from exoplanets to effectively teach concepts of contemporary astrophysics in classrooms.
Scilights are concise summaries written by professional science communicators that highlight the most interesting research published in AIP journals. Their goal is to give global visibility to the findings and bring them to a wider scientific audience.
The news was received with enthusiasm by the team. Dr. Hernández stated: “It is always satisfying to publish in an international journal, but being featured as a Scilight was a pleasant surprise. This recognition validates years of collaboration with science teachers and demonstrates the effectiveness of our working model and the quality of the teaching sequences co-designed and implemented in Chilean schools.”
For his part, Professor Rubén Montecinos, co-author of the study, highlighted the importance of making scientific advances accessible to educational communities: "One of the main challenges was the lack of pedagogically appropriate resources to teach the physics behind the discoveries of exoplanets. Although the data is available in open catalogs, its complexity makes it virtually inaccessible to teachers and students. This work seeks to overcome that barrier."
The team, which works under the auspices of the Millennium Nucleus for Young Exoplanets and their Moons (YEMS), hopes this recognition will encourage new collaborations between the university and schools, and that the working model will be replicated by other research centers. Dr. Hernández concluded: “Our goal is to promote the use of frontier science in the classroom as a powerful tool for promoting student learning, always working horizontally with teachers, who are the true specialists in the classroom.”
The article is available on the website of The Physics Teacher journal. The Scilight is entitled “Lesson sequence uses exoplanet data to teach fundamental concepts of astrophysics” and is available at the following link.