Science Icebreaker Activities: An Example from Gravitational Wave Astronomy

Abstract

At the beginning of a class or meeting an icebreaker activity is often used to help loosen the group and get everyone talking. Our motivation is to develop activities that serve the purpose of an icebreaker, but are designed to enhance and supplement a science-oriented agenda. The subject of this article is an icebreaker activity related to gravitational wave astronomy. We first describe the unique gravitational wave signals from three distinct sources: monochromatic binaries, merging compact objects, and extreme mass ratio encounters. These signals form the basis of the activity where participants work to match an ideal gravitational wave signal with noisy detector output for each type of source.Comment: Accepted to The Physics Teacher. Original manuscript divided into two papers at the request of the referee. For a related paper on gravitational wave observatories see physics/050920