Terse (the Associated Press, perhaps): "Astronomers from Cornell University are developing plans to build a large telescope in the Upper Atacama desert in Northern Chile."
Expansive (The New York Times?): "Atacama, Chile -- What in the world are Cornell University astronomers doing in the Upper Atacama desert of Northern Chile?"
Snappy (the New York Daily News?): "What does Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator and a proposed Cornell University telescope have in common? Well, both can view objects in the infrared."
Campy (Newsweek?): "A group of intrepid astronomers, including Jeremy Darling and Professor Riccardo Giovanelli, are willing to face oxygen deprivation, land mines and peanut shortages to achieve their goal: determine the feasibility of building a telescope."
Same story, different slants. And all come, not from seasoned reporters, but from undergraduates in Astronomy 201, a Cornell course for non-science majors taught by astronomy professors Martha Haynes and her husband, Riccardo Giovanelli. For one of the course's nine papers this fall, the astronomers set their 52 students -- among them majors in architecture, English and history -- the task of writing a report in the form of a three-page news story. That meant no technical jargon or higher math, but instead lay language and clear explanation.
The subject: A large optical/infrared telescope that Cornell astronomers want to build in the Upper Atacama desert in Northern Chile. The chosen site is 17,000 feet above sea level and very dry. Giovanelli heads the Cornell committee exploring the feasibility of the telescope and has led several expeditions into the remote region to choose the site.
"This was not a course in how to write," said Haynes, "but rather a course in using writing to learn science." The professors cautioned their classes that "newspaper reporters don't use footnotes and bibliographies." And they issued a particular warning: "Reporters can be (and are, on occasion) fired for plagiarism."
But the students seemed perfectly capable of their own phrase-making. "Before one delves into the question of why this section of the earth is perfect, one must identify the functions and limitations of telescopes to determine why this region of the Earth is an astronomer's 'Garden of Eden,'" wrote Craig Shapiro.
A similar theme was struck by Matthew Phillips: "High aloft the dry, cloudless, cold desert peak, these astronomers have chosen their Garden of Eden to build their telescope to do their research."
Explained Luther Bates with disarming simplicity: "Whether the complex toy of an inquisitive child or a multi-billion dollar orbiting space instrument, the main purpose of every telescope is to gather light."
Student Susy Hwang introduced an element of tough reality with, "Undertaking the task of building the world's largest infrared telescope will take patience and hard work, not to mention a hefty endowment."
Most of these putative science writers concentrated on the science of the telescope, explaining its function and goals. But one writer, Julia Yoo, set the scene with economical yet descriptive reportage of the site itself: "It is just a one-hour drive from the village of San Pedro and a two-hour drive from the cities of Calama and Chu-quicamata, which are mining-industry centers served by air service to Santiago. Fortunately, many of the services necessary for the operation of an astronomical facility are more readily available due to the technically sophisticated presence of the mining industry and its operations at extreme altitudes."
Giovanelli explained that "these are students who are not comfortable with theorems and computation but who like to explain ideas and concepts in more literary forms." At that, he said, "they did pretty well."
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