You and your students have all seen beautiful photos from the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes of galaxies strewn throughout the universe, but what are we really seeing? In other words, how big is the universe, how old is it, and how do we know? I’ll present a broad overview of our place in both space and time, and of the evidence that supports this scientific understanding. The presentation will include many concrete ideas that should help your teaching, including the use of scale models for both space and time, a simple way to understand and explain the expansion of the universe, an explanation of why there is a horizon to our observable universe, and much more.
