UW Mars Tillman Coe School thanks

Coe Elementary
Public School
Seattle Washington

J. E. Tillman

My visit to Coe school differed from most other schools visits since David Warren, (the father of one of the students), is our system programmer, initiated building the weather station described elsewhere, and is heavily involved outreach activities. Assuming that the class might have been well prepared, I decided to bring more hardware than normal, taking the Viking Lander Meteorology Instrument System's breadboard and flight electronics, as well as a meteorology sensor assembly, MSA, and other hardware for show and tell. A 30 by 40 inch print of the Viking lander in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., was used to show where the MSA was mounted, along with the antenna, camers, etc. I also carried an example of a temperature system I built, wondering if it was worth the effort; it was.

I only used overheads and the hardware as visual aids and the students freely asked questions as the talk progressed. (A good web presentation would have been better in many ways and needs to be developed.) The students helped me on the derivation of the name for Mars, reminding me it was Roman, not Greek, and interjecting a bit of history. They also got a bit of my philosophy in the form of my "Rationale' for these outreach activities, normally intended for adult audiences and politicians. This was a great group of students; their comments and questions are repeated below. The 3-D glasses mentioned were used to display the very local "gullies" in the terrain attributed to water erosion; without the 3-D there is no possibility of "seeing" such dramatic features.

From hoffmann@coe.ssd.k12.wa.us Wed Jun 3 10:06 PDT 1998
To: Jim Tillman
Subject: Thank You from Coe Students

Dear Mr. Tillman,

Thank you for coming and telling us alot about Mars. I liked the part where we put on 3-D glasses. That was fun.

Sincerely, Jenice G

Dear Mr. Tillman, I really enjoyed when you visited our class. My favorite part was the weird goggle thing. I can't believe you can fit all those parts in the tiny box. I learned alot about Mars. Thank you for coming.

Sincerely, Jason M

The fitting parts into a tiny box is associated with a temperature system I developed for Earth boundary layer measurements. They saw a "very crude breadboard", where many of the components were simply soldered to each other, and it looked like a 3 dimensional electronic "rats nest". In contrast to its appearance, it has a stability of better than 0.005 % per month, greatly advanced the state of the art in resistance thermometry. and was was tested between -25 and +75 ° C. What Jason is commenting on is that the final system consisted of two PC boards, the field component being about 2.5 by 4.5 cm while the data processing end was about 80 by 100 cm, while the breadboard was about 20 by 40 cm, with a smaller board on top.

Dear Mr. Tillman,

Thank you for coming to speak to our class about Mars. I enjoyed listening to the parts about the strange weather patterns. I also enjoyed looking at some of the pictures through the 3-D glasses. I learned that there is a possibility of life on Mars under the surface.

Sincerely yours, Kate H

I passed a sample of the Antarctic lichen, which was kindly provided by Chris McKay, around to the students. The lichen which live under the surface of rocks, and look like thin, black ink, take thousands of years to grow. I described how they hide under the surface from the ultraviolet light, and where its slightly more hospitable to life.

Dear Mr. Tillman,

Thank you for coming. Will you come next year? I hope you will. My favorite part was the three demensional pictures of Mars and the Rover picture.

Your friend, Erin W

Dear Mr. Tillmann,

Thank you for coming to my class. I learned alot about Mars yesterday. I learned that Mars is still cold, even though it's summer. I forget to ask you this, Does a dust storm occur every day?

Thanks. Jim S

A response was provided describing that with our limited ability to observe planet wide, etc., we know something about the seasonal occurrence of dustiness, and that great dust storms occur in some years, but not others. However, the ability to communicate lots of data and take many images limits our knowledge.

Dear Mr. Tillman,

Thank you for telling us the things we didn't know about Mars. The 3-D glasses looked cool. When I put them on, the pictures looked 3-D. The pictures popped out.

Sincerely, TonC

P.S. You are a great scientist!

Dear Mr. Tillman,

Thank you for telling us about Mars. I learned alot about the planet. I hope you can tell us more someday. I never knew Mars was so interesting.

Your friend, Sengdarath

Dear Mr. Tillman,

Thank you for coming to our classroom and telling us about Mars. We really appreciate your coming. It was really interesting. We learned alot about Mars.

Sincerely, Ksenia P

Dear Mr. Tillman,

Thank you for coming to our class. I learned about the Viking Lander.

Thanks. Elliott

Dear Mr. Tillman,

Thank you for coming to our classroom and telling us all about Mars. It was interesting to see stuff that is really put in space. My favorite part was when we looked through the 3-D glasses.

Thank You. Justin D

Dear Mr. Tillman,

Thank you for coming to Rm. 12 to talk and teach about Mars. We were so excied about you coming. The things you taught us were very interesting. We like to learn about different places.

Sincerely, Melissa P

Dear Mr. Tillman, It was interesting having a real scientist in our class. I hope I am the first man on Mars. I want to be a scientist too!

Your friend, Ryan B

Dear Jim Tillman,

Thank you so much for coming to our class. We really loved having you here talking about Mars. Every answer was extremely interesting to listen to. I haves many new things in my brain right now about Mars. I liked hearing aout the Pathfinder that went on Mars and discovered rocks, dust storms and gigantic craters.

I appreciate you teaching us alot.

Sincerely, Anthony G

Dear Mr. Tillman,

My class was delighted with your visit! Thank you very much. It was fun and educational for all of us.

Best Wishes, Ms. Hoffmann Coe Elementary School

J. Tillman