Supernovae, their light and physics in high school

Supernovae are the cosmic distributers of chemical elements but we do not know how they explode. We do know some things about the light they emit. I will describe the use of global energy conservation and new insights into the central statistical properties of type Ia supernovae as a population - in particular the width luminosity relation. Hopefully the accumulating data will soon reveal how these cosmic explosions occur. If time permits, I will describe efforts to incorporate simple numerical calculations in the high-school physics class.