Oct 2-4, 2023
Los Altos High School
Kalee Tock
Instructor
Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies
Life As We *Don't* Know It: The Search for Extraterrestrials
Science
The search for extraterrestrials is as old as humanity. In this workshop, students will actually participate in a citizen science campaign to look for evidence of a planet via the signature dimming of its host star as the planet \"transits\", or passes in front of it. We will then discuss the ways in which similar and related techniques will be used by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to investigate planetary atmospheres. In the course of this, we will describe what JWST is looking for, and offer some conjectures about what it might find.
Meet the Speaker:
Ms. Kalée Tock earned her B.S. in Chemistry from Harvard University and an M.S. from the Stanford University Department of Chemistry. She earned a second Master's degree in Learning, Design, and Technology from the Stanford School of Education. She taught for several years as an MCAT instructor for the Princeton Review (physics and chemistry) before taking a position at Stanford Online High School teaching Chemistry, Foundations in Science, and Astronomy. She now teaches separate courses in Astrophysics and Astrobiology.