Solar Flare Experiment on Elective Hall

Professor Jackson

September 05, 2010 1:51 PM

Solar Flare Experiment by Professor Jackson

Jackson stood on the balcony waiting for his seventh year students. He rubbed his dark hair and sighed. He had spent his summer working with Gyula Szabo but now he was back to Sonora. He liked teaching better then working under Szabo which kind of scared him when he had first started but he liked the idea that he was shaping young people into Astronomers. Once everyone had entered the balcony Jackson smiled at them.

“Welcome back!” He said with a clap of his hands. “Today we will be studying Solar Flares. Solar Flares are large explosions on the surface of the sun. They affect all layers of the solar atmosphere heating the plasma to tens of millions of kelvins while accelerating electrons, protons and ions to nearly the speed of light.” He paused wondering if he had lost them. Once they seemed to have finished scribbling notes he began again. “Most flares occur in active regions around sunspots. Flares are powered by the sudden release of magnetic energy stored in the corona.”

“Now I bet you all are wondering why as wizards we need to know this. There is a theory in the Wizarding Astronomy community that we are the cause of the Solar Flares. The more magic that is being done at one time the more likely a Solar Flare will happen.” He paused.

“In about twenty minutes witches and wizards from all around the world will be casting spells for thirty mintues to see if we have an effect on the sun. It is our job to watch the sun to see if we see any Solar Flares at all. Our findings will be sent to the Wizarding Astronomy Committee for review.”

“So everyone take a spot at the telescope and begin watching.” He said with a smile. “If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask!”

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Jera Valson

September 27, 2010 10:28 AM

Questioning validity by Jera Valson

Astronomy was one of those odd classes that could sometimes be a logistical nightmare with the amount of information collected and assignments set, and sometimes could be a perfectly peacful hour spent starring at the stars. Jera was genuinely hoping for one of the latter variety today. She was tired from Quidditch practise and homework assignments and dealing with some argumentative first year and ordering more medication for her ma. Seventh year was taking its toll and Jera was already looking forward to midterm. She was planning on relaxing and doing nothing with Jessie (and she had a niggling feeling that Jessie would have some ideas for encouraging relxation of which neither of their parents would approve).

At the start of the class, Professor Jackson didn't really indicate whether it would be a manic or calm lesson, so Jera took out her writing materials and kept her fingers crossed while the opening lecture began. She took diligent notes on Solar Flares - she's heard of them before, but her knowledge didn't yet extend any further than their name. She was intruiged to discover they might be related to magic, but was baffled about how such a general cause could lead to a massive effect many lightyears away. She listened to the detail of the experiment they were just about to witness, and couldn't help but frown at its dubious validity. nevertheless, it was the relaxed type of class she had been hoping for, so Jera went out to set up her telescope, and only spoke to her neighbor when she was sure she was out of earshot of Professor Jackson.

"Sounds about as likely as a Crumple Horned Snorkack," she said just loud enough to be overheard.

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Grayson Wright

October 07, 2010 4:08 PM

That's often a good idea. by Grayson Wright

He'd been - even he would admit it - over-sensitive when he was younger, but since around the time of the noisy aftermath of the occasion on which his mother had more or less floated the idea that she and his father would be okay if he'd rather date Thomas than Lucie, Gray had found it harder to get worked up about things. This was proving both a boon and a curse as he dealt with all the usual seventh year issues, but in life, he was discovering it to be a mostly positive thing. At least he didn't have to worry about finding a magical therapist who wasn't already seeing one of his relatives.

There were, though, still some things that could bring up real emotions he'd rather not deal with. One of those things was the end of the world. Gray acknowledged that it wasn't exactly a normal thing to worry about, but he couldn't help but think of it from time to time, and he'd come to the conclusion at about age six that he wanted nothing to do with it. He'd never heard of an afterlife he thought he'd like better than the currentlife, and so he tried to avoid thinking about things which would send him to the former in an unnecessarily early, painful, and violent manner. Such as the end of the world, literally or just as he knew it.

Unfortunately for him, the Astronomy lesson, coming as it did after an especially nasty session with Anne's encoded Muggle Studies book in which he'd struggled to understand the lesson and then gotten sidelined by trying to translate his cousin's doodles into English, putting off his Potions work even further, made him think about the end of the world right off the bat. Hearing that using magic was helping the sun to blow up did not make him feel any better about this, especially since his cousin - who just couldn't write anything in English that she knew how to make unintelligible in at least one way; even in letters, which she sent thankfully rarely, she couldn't resist including a few lines in something or the other - was involved in making magic more usable. Anne was really ruining his day today.

Still, though, the project made him feel oddly important. Having seventh years on this made him think that this was either being done by someone else at the same time or that it wasn't actually that serious of an experiment, but it was kind of cool to feel like a Real Researcher. One of the things that irritated him most about writing papers for his classes was knowing that it was less than a chance in a million that he would ever actually come up with anything original within the parameters of the assignment, making the exercise an uninformed rehash of someone else's ideas. He could at least pretend this was for real.

"Sounds about as likely as a Crumple Horned Snorkack," Jera said from the telescope beside him.

End of fantasy. "You're seriously telling me you don't believe in Crumple Horned Snorkacks?" Gray said, just as quietly but with a put-on tone of surprise. "You - shock me, Jer." He shrugged, going back to normal. "Guess they had to, uh, do a research project, but nobody's going to let us do anything for real, right?"

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Jera

October 13, 2010 4:12 PM

But not always by Jera

"You're seriously telling me you don't believe in Crumple Horned Snorkacks?" Jera sniggered into her hand at first, then looked round and smiled appreciatively at Gray. Her brain took a short detour to wonder whether Grayson had actually believed in such fairytales at a previous point during his lifetime. She thought that he probably had. "Nobody's going to let us do anything for real, right?"

"Apparently not," Jera had to agree as she focussed her telescope. "But that's high school for you." She was under no delusion that anything she did at high school really matttered in the world. That wasn't to say it couldn't useful; Jera had already found many of the spells she'd learned at Sonora to be invaluable. However remained true that if Jera was going to do anything defining in her youth, it would almost certainly not occur in her high school classrooms. College, perhaps, would provide that opportunity. Of course Jera wasn't sure she really wanted to go to college. She'd be a year younger than her peers for a start, due to skipping fifth year at Sonora. More important was the fact that she wasn't sure she even wanted to keep studying right now. A break from the classroom sounded loike fun, which might be a peculiar thought for an Aladren to have, but Jera thought she might learn a lot by seeing the world through her own eyes, rather than via a textbook. Then again, if she did have the opportunity for real and proper research while at college it might make the venture more exciting and worth her while. "Do you think it will be any different at college?" Jera voiced her question allowed to Grayson. "I can't decide if I want to go."

If she did want to go, there was no deciding where. She didn't need the Ivy league colleges, and wasn't prepared to try for them. besides, her Godfather was a college professor who would be delighted, she was sure, to see his Goddaughter more often. Plus lots of Sonora students went to Sapienti, anyway. If she didn't go to college, Jera liked to think she would start by touring Europe, and let her journey take her wherever. She'd go with Jessie, and they'd get into all sorts of trouble. It would be fanatastic. But might get dull after a few months... they could have fun at college, too, providing Jera could convince Jessie to go. "How about you - made any life-altering decisions yet?"

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Gray

October 19, 2010 6:18 PM

Life's messy like that. by Gray

Considering how little time he'd had to work on that one, Gray appreciated that his comment seemed to have been more or less appreciated by Jera. Sometimes, people took him literally when he didn't exactly mean for them to, though that happened less often now than it had in earlier years.

Unless she was actually laughing at him for sounding like an idiot because she had taken him literally, but he was trying to look on the bright side here.

Bright side. Ha. That was kind of like a pun, considering the experiment involved the sun. Which could blow up. But there - this had to be a hypothetical, or at least there was a better chance of it than the professor had presented to them. There was the old philosophical debate about magic and where it came from - from the individual, or if it was a pervasive force that only some bodies possessed the right quality to channel at will and with intent. And Gray had always, now that he thought to really think about it, thought it was the former, since that worked better when he was trying to explain how there were some big wizards (like his father) who were middling to incompetent at magic while some flat-out tiny witches were powerful enough to tie said big wizards up in knots without thinking about it too hard.

But...what was the topic, again?

Oh, yeah. College. Great. And his brain was having trouble with the idea of Jera not going to college. Not doing everything expected and proper didn't square with his concept of her. Of course, he imagined his own relative lack of enthusiasm about the subject would take many people off guard, too, so he was no one to judge.

"Yeah...decisions...are few," he admitted. "So more school is looking like the plan." Besides, his grades had been good enough for scholarships and working for the school press to cover most things. Nepotism was a wonderful thing when, against several odds, it helped him out and meant he didn't have to make those decisions for a while. "But for different...I don't know," he said honestly. "The only person - person I know who's gone to college recently is Anne, and she's studying everything, so there's so much legwork there she's not really indicative of anything."

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