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A Stadium Analogy for Spectroscopy
(kevin_x-ray_foosball2.mov & kevin_x_ray_foosball_clipped_web.mov)
Run Time: 2 min 13 sec
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We first see Kevin, and then a graphic of the electromagnetic spectrum, spanning
from radio to infrared to optical to X-rays to gamma rays.
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KEVIN: So, if you put light through a prism, you get a spectrum of colors - same thing is true of X-rays. There's higher energy - shorter wavelength and lower energy - longer wavelength.
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An artist's animation of the Astro-E2 satellite in orbit around the earth
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NARRATIVE: How can X-ray spectroscopy help us understand an x-ray source in space? Think about it like this.
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Dr. Ilana Harrus begins her description of spectroscopy with an
analogy.
Two concentric circles are drawn on a white board to represent a
stadium. A stick figure of a person is drawn outside the stadium.
An arrow is drawn from the stadium to the person, with a ball at the
end of the arrow.
Ilana returns, explaining the analogy. We return to shots of the
whiteboard, on which someone writes "Game = Phenomena" and "Balls =
Photons". The arrow is re-drawn from the stadium to the person,
ending with an American football. A question mark is written inside
the stadium, after which we see an artist's animation of the Chandra X-ray Observatory in orbit. This fades to X-ray images of the
supernova remnants Crab Nebula and Cassiopeia A.
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ILANA: So, there is a stadium and people are playing
different games in it, and they are using different balls. And the
guy or the woman is standing there outside, and then from time to
time they get a ball and they look at the ball and they know what
game is played.
Spectroscopy is this: It's the ability of telling what are the
different phenomenon that occur, say your stadium is like a black
hole or near a black hole. And each, let's say each phenomenon in
physics is going to be a different game. And so you want to know
what are the games that are played, so you want to get the balls.
Okay? So, let's say that you get a football and you say okay well
they are playing football - well you don't know where they are playing football. So now you need something which is a good imaging, which is Chandra. Chandra is going to tell you, "Oh I know, because if I do an image of the stadium, I know where they are playing football, they are playing football right here in that corner of the stadium0."
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An image of the Astro-E2 X-Ray Spectrometer in the lab.
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NARRATIVE: The X-ray spectrometer is so sensitive it can detect extremely subtle differences between individual X-ray photons.
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This portion shows Ilana playing foosball. The video shows close-ups
of the ping-pong ball, the non-burned foosball, and the burned foosball.
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ILANA: If you play foosball like I do, which is a lot -
I'm a pro, I'm a total pro - you can actually play foosball with a ping pong ball if you don't know how to play foosball, but you can also play foosball with a real foosball which you have burned, so that they have a better, you know, a better grip. This is a trick for pro only. The game is really, to have an instrument, which is good enough to tell you the difference between the burned foosball, the non-burned foosball, and the ping-pong ball. Astro-E2 is going to tell you the difference between those 3.
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