A California nonprofit corporation whose primary purpose is to complement elementary through high school science education
A California nonprofit corporation whose primary purpose is to complement elementary through high school science education
Just as every journey begins with a single step, all science begins with a single question. Where Rigel represents the hunter Orion’s first step on the path in search of his quarry, RISE hopes to encourage students to formulate those initial questions about their world which lead to scientific inquiry.
Rigel has been a bright shining beacon helping to guide early explorers in their sailing ships across vast oceans to distant shores and to guide man-made probes across the vast reaches of space to distant planets and beyond. RISE can similarly be a beacon providing guidance for students motivated to ask, “What’s out there?” The Witch Head Nebula, a large cloud of gas and dust particles located about 200 light years beyond Rigel, is visible on Earth only as a result of that star’s brilliant light. One of RISE’s chief goals is to illuminate the myriad possibilities encompassed by science for students of the twenty-first century.
Scientific breakthroughs don’t just happen on their own. People are needed to make the millions of small steps and the few giant leaps that add up to scientific evolution. People like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking -- scientists. It is common to think of scientific progress being made by a small number of such geniuses with special insight into the workings of the world. But progress has actually been made, for the most part, by many ordinarily clever people building step by step from the work of their predecessors. Newton himself acknowledged this sentiment with his statement “If I have seen a little further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” (Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident.)