I don’t even know where to begin.  It is all so amazing. 

• My classes last night were held at the Cathedral of the Incarnation. There was the Gaia visit.  It amazing.
• There was a minor scheduling snafu so I we gave our climate change talk to two different audiences.  These ended up being very different types of presentations.
• My environmental science graduate students helped with the presentation and were the most exciting part of the night.  I just had them give their elevator pitch and people started asking all kinds of questions.
• My How Things Work class ended up doing some math.  (always good time)
• My How Things Work class only asked two or so questions – the but the general public had a serious amount of questions.  There was a nice amount of questions being asked.
• Here’s the thing, I don’t know the answers to most of the questions (ask me about lasers or voltage and if it’s a really good question, don’t ask me, ask Professor Sean Bentley) but my Environmental Science grad students did.  It was wonderful (SERIOUSLY WONDERFUL) to see my students jump up and answer each question.  GO TEAM!
• A special thanks to Kyle Sabo and the Cathedral of the Incarnation for the opportunity to speak.
• I had to get my Thanos arguement in there, though fewer and fewer people know who Thanos is any more.

A special thanks goes to my Environmental Science masters students:  Audrey, Chelsea, Hazy, Kit, Jose, Ryan, and Sheza!

The quotes from the night were unreal:

• Someone came up to me afterwards and said, “I know all this stuff.  I didn’t learn anything tonight.  I didn’t come to learn, I came to get hope.  And boy did I get it.”  He went on to talk about how amazing the students were.  (I think I got the quote right, it was hard because I didn’t have a pen to write anything done.)
• “There is so much information on this chart, how can any deny this?”  In reference to the Climate Change.
• “Who is that student? She is going to be an amazing professor someday.”
• And this one which has been a common question during these talks.  “Are Universities lining up to join you on your community idea?”  I respond with, there is movement (e.g., Cosmic Pathways Chicago, Professor KellyAnn Monaghan’s art class) but there is still a big hill to climb.
• From One-minute papers:
  • The [diffraction] glasses we got were really fun!” X 4
  • Very Interesting – but very scary at the same time. Definitely makes me want to research this further and find solutions to save our planet.
  • And this one:

Faculty!  Do you want to teach a crowd of people who will ask meaty questions, try to get the root of problems, and listen to ever moment of your lecture?  Teach people that show up to these lectures.  It is like the best liberal arts class discussion ever!  I love my students and they ask good questions in class.  But it is something else standing in front of random amazing people who’s background you have no idea about and try to answer politically sensitive questions.  Oh boy, that’s fun!

Here is our presentation:  Climate change basics (At a level of intro physics for non-science majors)

Here are the pictures: