Shaw-IAU Workshops by the OAE

Tolkien's legendarium has been very popular in the last years, mainly thanks to the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films, but recently thanks to the series The Rings of Power. It is well known that Tolkien was very thorough in creating this world, with languages, maps, and even calendars for the different folks in Middle-Earth. In this contribution, we explore the use Tolkien's calendar in science class, comparing it against our calendar. This can be used to further motivate students, increase curiosity about not only how calendars work but also about what rules our current calendar follows, as well as the reasons behind it, which are very much related to Astronomy and Earth Sciences. We show that Tolkien calendar outperforms our calendar slightly, despite other drawbacks.

Biography:

Javier Vaquero-Martinez is an associate professor at Universidad de Extremadura in Experimental Science Teaching at the Teaching Training Faculty in Cáceres city, Spain. He previously finished his PhD in Earth Sciences (mainly the study of water vapor through remote sensing instruments to study its role in the radiative balance). He is particularly interested in teaching of Earth Sciences and Astronomy, how it can be improved and what tools can be useful for teachers (both primary and secondary school, even university teaching) to help students acquire a deeper knowledge of these topics.