Piner High School STEAM Certificate

Level 1 Response

Eli Bui

Stem Cafe - Exploding Stars

Steve Smith

7 September 2023

The guest speaker at the first STEM Cafe of the year was Steve Smith. Here, he talks about his

own personal life, stating that he used to have hair, likes long walks, and enjoys sunlight. He also

has a dog named Dicks that gets spoiled but makes a mess in his house! In this stem cafe, he

spoke about the process behind supernovas and their relationship with star explosions.

He started this cafe by displaying pictures of different supernova remnants, the structure

resulting from the explosion of a star in a supernova, showing Veil Nebula, Cygnus, Milky Way,

Cassiopeia A, and many, many more! In the word supernova, Steve explains that Nova means

new star, not stars that have just been created, but stars that have been newly discovered. This

usually only occurs in binary star systems (multiple stars are orbiting each other at the center of

the system), these need to get close enough to start siphoning energy from their partner which

leads to possible nuclear interactions when the matter hits the star, this is called a nova. A

Supernova is a super new star, made from supergiant stars, supergiant stars require lots of matter

and are only about one in around 500,000, they start from star forming nebulae and they are on

the massive star track, which needs 8 solar masses to qualify. Towards the end of a red/blue

supergiant it expands and turns into a black hole, neutron star, or explodes so that it completely

leaves nothing. A prominent star Steve showed us was called “Betelgeuse'', a red supergiant star
in the constellation of Orion and the tenth-brightest star in the night sky, what’s special about this

star is that its red hue indicts that its nearing the end of its lifetime. After this, Steve began to

explain the fundamentals of the periodic table. Focusing on the process behind hydrogen

bonding, he described how helium is made using hydrogen, which makes carbon and oxygen

using the helium, then it makes Neon, Sodium, Magnesium, Aluminum using the carbon, then it

makes oxygen and magnesium using the neon, then it makes Silicon and some other things using

oxygen, finally it makes Nickel which turns to iron using the silicon. Hydrogen bonding isn’t the

sole factor behind this reaction, but this mass formation of different elements is a result of

supernova stars exploding at the end of their lifetime! Immense shockwaves are also created by

the explosion of supernovas, and are essentially responsible for all of different materials in the

world. Lastly, Steve focuses on nuclear bombs vs supernova explosions, a supernova is the

second most powerful outburst of energy in the universe, and are 3 to 4 octillion times more

powerful than the average atomic bomb!

Reflection

I found my experience at the first Stem Cafe of the year to be very interesting and enjoyable, as

the visual representations of Steve provided along with his explanations really helped me put into

perspective his answers! I found his choice of stars and supernovas to be quite fascinating and

saw his personality only added to the integrity of his presentation. My personal favorite part of

this presentation has to be when he spoke about the supergiant star “Betelgeuse”, it really put

into perspective how small earth is and how important stars like this are to the universe as a

whole! Overall, I felt like his formal and confident tone was very reassuring in his

demonstrations.
Article Analysis: Stars Basics - NASA

In addition to this stem cafe about stars, I found a simple article about the timeline of stars, going

from their creation to death. In birth, stars form in large clouds of gas and dust called molecular

clouds, these clouds range from 1,000 to 10 million times the mass of the Sun and can spam as

much as hundreds of light-years. It’s through batches of these molecular clouds, which are often

called stellar clusters, and molecular clouds full of stellar clusters that are called stellar nurseries

that stars are formed. Throughout a star's life, its gas provides its fuel, and its mass determines

how rapidly it runs through its supply, with lower-mass stars burning longer, dimmer, and cooler

than very massive stars. More massive stars must burn fuel at a higher rate to generate the energy

that keeps them from collapsing under their own weight, while some low-mass stars will shine

for trillions of years – longer than the universe has currently existed – while some massive stars

will live for only a few million years. Finally, in a star's death, the star’s iron core collapses until

forces between the nuclei push the brakes, then it rebounds. This change creates a shock wave

that travels outward through the star. The result is a huge explosion called a supernova. The core

survives as an incredibly dense remnant, either a neutron star or a black hole. Material cast into

the cosmos by supernovae and other stellar events will enrich future molecular clouds and

become incorporated into the next generation of stars.