It's that gift-giving time of year and, as a father of two, I'm always on the lookout for books that will amuse my kids. So I jumped at the chance to chat to FQXi's Brian Greene, who recently published a kids' book covering modern physics and cosmology.
Now, I'm a firm believer in teaching children good science and not just pacifying them with simplistic answers such as "because that's the way it is." But I have to admit, I did wonder if this was going a bit too far. After all, general relativity, quantum entanglement and dark matter are tough concepts for adults concentrating really hard to get.
But Greene, along with other leaders in theoretical physics, are taking these headache-inducing topics and making them accessible for children and youth.
It turns out, I needn't have worried. Greene, a professor of mathematics and physics at Columbia University is already a renowned science promoter, and author of the best-selling "The Elegant Universe." Now he has written a gripping 30-page board book aimed at showing eight year olds that science can reveal a reality far stranger than anything from Hollywood.
In "Icarus at the Edge of Time," Greene takes readers on an interstellar journey aboard a spaceship sent from Earth to visit aliens living on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. Icarus, the angst-ridden great-grandson of the spaceship's leading scientist, decides to leave the ship to explore a nearby black hole. Although Icarus survives his brush with the black hole, he forgets about the time-bending properties of gravity returning from his adventure many thousands of years later.
So why did Greene decide to target a young audience?
"I strongly feel that we begin life as scientists," Greene told me. "When a kid is pulling things apart and smashing it back together they are doing a childlike version of what we do at the Large Hadron Collider, and what we have to do is nurture that starting point as opposed to setting up a framework that zaps the passion and joy."
When NOVA released the television version of "The Elegant Universe," Greene was surprised to receive letters from kids asking him questions about string theory. Using those letters and his experience organizing the World Science Festival in New York that had an entire program for youth and families, Greene wrote the book emphasizing exciting narrative proven to kept young audiences' attention.
"This book is a small step in the direction of bringing the wonders of modern science to kids or adults that haven't grappled yet with some of the major insights of the last century, such as Einstein's general relativity," said Greene. "The story can be taken in by kids or adults, and by merely following the narrative one of the strangest features of relativity becomes clear by what happens in the story."
Well that sounds impressive, so I put it to the test--trying it out on my daughter. She's only two, so I doubted that she'd get much of the book, but I was surprised to be asked later "Who made the Big Bang?" I gracefully said I had no idea, but suggested she call Neil Turok.
Greene likewise has read his book to his oldest son, 4 years old, who was the inspiration for the book and who apparently enjoys reading the story. In addition to just showing kids how cool science can be, it's hoped that the book will interest students in modern physics.
"Our current education of physics for many students ends in the late 1600s," said Greene. "A lot of students never experience anything more than Newton."
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada has recognized that void, and is working hard to fill the minds of high school students with the last few centuries of modern physics.
Since February, PI has offered a 25-minute video and courseware on dark matter to high school teachers teaching 16 and 17 year old science students. Already, it's become a hit in the educational curriculum world, receiving over 2500 requests from teachers for the free course material.
I chatted to Damian Pope, the senior manager of scientific outreach for PI. "There are so many cool stories in modern physics that students don't know about," Pope told me. "Dark matter is just an incredible mystery and hole in the knowledge, but when I explain it to students often they didn't know about it before. And, they get very excited when I point out that there are some unsolved problems in physics, that it's not a done deal, and there's so much more for future generations of scientists to discover."
In addition to a succinct explanation of the history of dark matter, there is a hands-on experiment. (I couldn't help but wonder how on Earth you design a dark matter experiment for kids, when adults aren't having that much luck finding the stuff.) The experiment harks back to early observations that led to the discovery of dark matter, which Niayesh Afshordi discusses in an earlier post. In the experiment, students spin a weighted string. As the weight changes so does the speed of the spinning string, showing students the relationship between mass and orbit just like in stars orbiting a galaxy.
As well, teachers and students really get to hear from leading physicists musing on what they think new experiments are most likely to show about dark matter. Looking behind the curtain of theoretical physics might go a long way to inspiring not just the next generation of physicists but all future scientists.