TEACHER: This is Miss Ellie.

Ellie White, and she's from Marshall University.

And I've been telling them how cool of an experience this is going to be, because I don't think any other kids in the entire world have what she has made here.

And we were talking, really, like, this morning how important this is, about getting these things out, especially because we live in Appalachia.

So how many of you guys have heard of the Green Bank Observatory?

Almost all of you.

All of you.

That's great.

- I want to be an astrophysicist and hopefully go to MIT.

ELLIE WHITE: How cool.

- Fingers crossed.

[laughs] - We are from Appalachia, and a lot of people look down on us and think that people here are uneducated and things like that.

And I want to help break that-- you know, that stereotype.

- And as a result of talking with Dr. Richard Prestage, he gave me some projects to do.

He actually let me do research as a high school student.

TEACHER (VOICEOVER): And I wanted to bring Ellie into my classroom to let them know that we have these awesome resources here in West Virginia that a lot of people don't think about.

- And it's really important because scientists-- there's a lot of work to do, and scientists can't do all of it, because there aren't a ton of scientists.

So Richard here is going to talk about why that's important, for students to do citizen science.

- You know, people play music.

People do art.

People, even if they're not famous artists, like to explore these different fields.

And why not do the same thing with science?

- Yeah.

- So tell us about what you made over there and how it works.

- So this is a great thing about radio astronomy.

It can be done with stuff that you dig up out of your backyard.

It doesn't weigh very much.

It's light, but it's really not very different from the Green Bank Telescope.

So-- - If we put all this stuff together, we're going to have that.

Do you think they could build it in, like, 10 minutes?

- Oh, yeah.

- I have a strong one, so you're taking-- [overlapping speech] - I got these on the side.

- Small.

- Here.

- Hey, can I have that other side, please?

- May I have the other side.

BOY: I think this goes backwards.

[overlapping speech] GIRL: No, stick it on the bottom.

Remember, these are the bottom.

BOY: Yeah.

GIRL: We need-- [overlapping speech] GIRL: I need a little-- TEACHER: So I'm going to go over there and see if we can find the copper wire and these little zip ties.

- 37 and 1/2.

- OK, I think we can put it back on there.

ELLIE WHITE: We all have different context.

- So I'm really proud of you guys.

You did a very good job.

Now-- so Ellie created that curriculum over there.

So the next step in this is to actually get this thing moving and going and collecting data and then sending it to you.

- How many lessons are we going to do?

Because hopefully, there's a lot.

TEACHER: Oh-- so that means they're excited about it.

Hopefully, there's a lot.

[ambient music]