A Solar Icebreaker Activity

If you are not familiar with the term "icebreaker" it is generally used to describe an activity at the beginning of a meeting, workshop or class to "break the ice" or get everyone talking to one another.

This activity allows people to work together in groups to match up printed X-ray and visible light images of the Sun. Although those participating in the icebreaker do not need to know this ahead of time, solar scientists have found that active regions in the the Sun's corona are corelated with sunspot locations in the photosphere. The corona is observed in X-rays, the photosphere is observed in visible or white light. It is this relationship on which we base this activity.

How to Run the Icebreaker

Print out a copy of the key to take with you.

At the beginning of your meeting or class have everyone break into small groups of three or four people. Pass out one set of ten images to each group.

It works well to start the activity by asking everyone

"What are we looking at?"

Entertain answers, encourage discussion. Once everyone understands that we are looking at the Sun, you might explain that one set of images is the "surface" of the Sun or photosphere and the other set of images is of the Sun's outermost layer, the corona, which we observe most regularly from space.

Now, ask the groups to match each white light image to an X-ray image. Give them five to ten minutes to complete this task. I do not provide any instruction about what features in the images to use in the matching. It is enjoyable to see the different patterns people come up with.

Allow the groups to move around the room if they choose. In one of my most successful icebreaker activities one group came up to the front of the room and put the pieces of paper on the overhead projector so they could use the bright lighting to better match up the sunspots and active regions.

Once each group has a matched set lead a discussion about which images go together and why. You'll find that most people do in fact match the active regions with the sunspots. Write each group's matching scheme on a chalk board or large piece of paper for everyone to see. If you have differences among groups discuss the differences and see if they can come to agreement.

If some groups matched the images based on a different pattern scheme have them explain what they did.

Once the discussion period is over, talk about how solar scientists have found a connection between the dark sunspots on the Sun's photosphere and the hot active regions in the Sun's corona. A nice discussion of this can be found in the Cycles Lesson in the Solar Classroom. This matching activity is also a part of that lesson.

Finally, if you choose, read them the key so they can see how they did.

This activity really gets people talking to each other and it is a bit more intellectual than typical icebreaker activities. It has proven to be a big hit at scientific meetings and workshops, but I suspect it will prove popular almost anywhere. Enjoy!

All of the images below will print out nicely on a black and white printer. Enjoy!