Transcript Astro 10: Introductory Astronomy

Astro 10: Introductory
Astronomy
*Rick Nolthenius
Call me “Rick”. (“Mr. Nolthenius”
sounds… unappealing!)
*Office: 706a 479-6506
*email: [email protected]
*visit my extremely excellent website!
Textbook – “Pathways to
Astronomy” – Schneider S.
and Arny T.
• $98 in the bookstore Maybe you can
find used editions elsewhere on the
web?
• One copy on reserve in the library
Grading
• 7 mult. choice quizzes based on text.
- ~10 questions each
- closed notes
• 2 video quizzes, after seeing ~1 hr video program.
Take notes and use them for your mult. choice
quiz, ~13 questions each
• Final Exam: 50 mult. choice questions. You may
have a single 8x10 sheet of paper crammed with all
the notes you can muster!
• Lowest score dropped. Will drop 2 quizzes but
ONLY if both are no-show’s
• Because…No make-ups
• Extra Credit possibilities
• Buy 11 green narrow scantron sheets from the
book store. $3. Cheap! Keep them in your notebook
along with a pencil.
New this year… clickers!
•
After the first 2 weeks, we’ll have impromptu questions during the
lectures, to monitor your “absorptivity”. Sometimes, you’ll have a
couple minutes to conference with your immediate classmate
neighbors and then click your answer. Some are “freebies”, and
don’t count, some do, and you’ll know which at the time given.
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It’s fun! It’s interactive! And it’ll help you on the regular quizzes.
Can’t say at this moment how many questions or how often we’ll do
this. This is new for me too.
•
Some of the questions will be directly taken from your upcoming
quiz or final.
•
Attendence important for doing well, and the clickers will help me
monitor this. Attendence per se will not be a factor in your final
grade
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My current plan is - Your cumulative score on all questions answered with
the clickers will count as another quiz, with the same weight (or so is my
current plan). This is the “8th quiz” as it were.
What will we Do in Astro 10?
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We start with the earth and sky, how the rotating earth and orbiting
earth make the sky show the patterns it does.
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Seasons, eclipses, some history.
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A session in the Cabrillo Planetarium, complete with spooky music!
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My own “Chapter 0” on the principles of clear thinking and scientific
method
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Then to boldly go, on to the planets and the stars!
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And Onward, to the Galaxy and Beyond
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To the Universe as a whole, the origin of our Universe, parallel
universes, Inflation and the quantum origin, and how the existence of
life says profound things about the nature of the Universe.
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I’ll stress the observational facts and how we use scientific inference
to arrive at ideas, and to test them to home in on our current theories
of the Universe.
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Exams will stress getting a picture of processes and the ‘why’ behind
what we see, not much on memorized factoids.