Figure 34: One of the most important jobs that astronauts have is to deliver presentations and share their experiences with other people.

SPEAKING OF SPACE

One of the most important parts of being a scientist is being able to present the results of an experiment clearly to other scientists, to students, and to all of us, so that we can learn from it and help science move forward to new and better ideas and questions. We are now going to participate in an activity to help us better understand how to present scientific results to those around us. The scientific results that you have just examined are broken into five sections. For this activity, you will break into five small teams with the help of your teacher. Each small team will take one of the five sections and develop a plan for presenting the information in a clear and concise way. In the development of your presentation, you should take into consideration the following points:

  1. Imagine that your small group is the actual scientific team that conceived planned, and carried out the experiment. Of course, it was the astronauts who actually carried out the inflight portion of the experiment, but your role was to oversee all the activities and make sure that they were trained appropriately to do the right job.
  2. Design your presentation cars if your audience has never heard the information before. This means that you must first provide enough background for your audience to understand the significance of the study. That is, explain why this study is important. Keep the audience foremost in your mind as you design your presentation and always make it as easy as possible for your audience to understand.
  3. Present information about the hypothesis, your methods, and the results. Remember that a hypothesis should be a simple, basic statement about what you expect the results to indicate. Develop your own hypothesis based on what was actually expected before the results were obtained. The description of your methods should include information about your protocol, the equipment that was used and how it was used, information about who the subjects were and how many there were, and anything else that is relevant about your study. In planning for your presentation, you must also determine the best way to display your results. You may want to graph the data or present a table of values. If you choose to produce a graph, include a title, the units of measurement on each axis, and a legend, and you should make it as clear as possible. Also, remember to tie the results of your study back to the hypothesis.
  4. Explain what the results indicate about how the body responds to space flight. Also try to determine how the results might affect our understanding of human physiology here on Earth. Indicate which, if any, health problems that we encounter here on Earth might be helped by the knowledge you have gained from your space flight results.
Keep in mind that there are literally dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of people involved in carrying out a space flight investigation, each of whom is responsible for his or her very own specific aspect of the study, and each of whom is absolutely necessa ry to the success of both the individual experiment and the overall mission. There should be plenty of different roles for the different members of your team. There should certainly be a principal investigator who is in charge of the whole study, just as Dr. Blomqvist was in charge of the real study that we've been learning about in this chapter. Also, a member of your team might serve as the engineer involved with the equipment. Another member of your team might be a physician or a physiologist assigned to make sure all of the experimental procedures are carried out safely. This is particularly important because the safety of the astronaut is always the first consideration. There might also be various technicians responsible for collecting the data or producing the graphics. There are plenty of jobs for everyone. You may want to use more than one person to present the experiment to your audience. Don't be afraid to use plenty of visual aids. Be imaginative, but also be faithful to the main objectives of your experiment.

After each presentation, there should be a short question and answer (Q&A) period so that the audience has the chance to ask relevant, thoughtful questions. Rely on your team members to help you answer the questions. Don't let this Q&A session scare you. It is always a part of any well-planned presentation. Remember, you will be on the other side of the fence asking questions of all the other groups!

Good luck!

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