{"id":531,"date":"2023-04-03T16:10:11","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T15:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/?p=531"},"modified":"2023-04-11T09:47:59","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T08:47:59","slug":"astro-obs-phd-student-organises-black-hole-workshop-for-refugee-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/2023\/04\/03\/astro-obs-phd-student-organises-black-hole-workshop-for-refugee-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Astro-Obs PhD student organises black hole science demonstration for refugee children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week, PhD student Houda Haidar and Native Scientist<\/a> coordinator Hania Tayara, partnered to organise an astronomy demonstration for Arabic-speaking refugee and asylum-seeking children. The demo was part of a broader scientific workshop that was held at Newman Catholic College in London. Houda\u2019s demo focused on black hole physics and included three main activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first activity helped the children understand the concept of density. This was demonstrated using a golf ball and a larger foam ball, to show that the biggest objects are not always the ones with the most mass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Houda participates in these three activities with the children, to teach them important concepts for black hole physics.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The second activity involved understanding space-time curvature. The golf ball and the foam ball were dropped on a scarf, which represented the “fabric” of space-time. The children could then observe which object led to deeper curvatures in the scarf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third activity involved understanding how accreting black holes obscured by dusty materials can be detected using a mid-infrared camera. Houda used a black bag to represent the dusty torus of accretion material, which can obscure accreting black holes. Despite the black bag preventing Houda from being seen by human eyes (or a camera in the optical wavelengths), with an infrared camera, Houda could be seen behind the black bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A fun and simple model Houda made to help teach the children about active galactic nuclei. It includes a dusty torus, an accretion disc, and even jets!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Other scientists from different disciplines (e.g., medicine, biology) also presented engaging demonstrations and tutorials. These ranged from extracting DNA from a strawberry to recording signals from the brain. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, PhD student Houda Haidar and Native Scientist coordinator Hania Tayara, partnered to organise an astronomy demonstration for Arabic-speaking refugee and asylum-seeking children. The demo was part of a broader scientific workshop that was held at Newman Catholic College … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11140,"featured_media":535,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10,8],"tags":[7,6,12],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-edi","category-event","category-outreach","tag-edi","tag-event","tag-outreach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":540,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/astro-obs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}