Learning Outcomes   Grading Policies   Yet Another Syllabus   Tutoring

This course is an F2 course. "Courses in this category will introduce students to the scientific method, the language of science, quantitative and qualitative analysis, and the importance of laboratory and/or field work. They will also familiarize students with the state of knowledge in a given science, known uncertainties that remain to be resolved, and the interdependence between science, technology, and society."

We will try to meet the first five objectives by using the programs Stellarium and Celestia to simulate scientific investigation. Both of these programs are free and open source, and both will run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Students are encouraged, although not required, to download these programs to their own computers. Stellarium will be used in most classes, while Celestia will only be used on occasion. (If you have room for only one, download Stellarium.) In the beginning, a great deal of our class time will be spent on this simulation. We will assume we are limited to naked eye observations, and will observe the images produced by the program, and make measurements on those images, to acquire our information. Students, working in groups, will propose observing times and locations. If adequate justification is provided, the model will be run accordingly and the image produced will be added to our collective database. From these we will attempt to determine why the shape of the Moon changes; where it is at different times during a night; how these positions change with the seasons; what other, longer term variations can be determined, etc. At first we will deal with the Moon, for which many of the results we seek are either known or can be easily looked up. After developing our model, and honing our skills, a new moon will be introduced: MoonX. We will use the same methods to study this moon, and determine its orbital elements. The web, and a downloaded version of Stellarium are less likely to be helpful in this case. Both Graded Learning Opportunities will present a number of our images and permit students to show which ones they would use, and how, to determine whatever they can about our Moon or MoonX.

We will try to meet the other three objectives with a combination of lectures, discussions, and readings from the web. NASA has made a tremendous efforts to reach out to all sorts of audiences with a wide variety of educational tools, and we will try make use of some of them. Graded Learning Opportunities will contain questions, probably multiple-guess, about the material covered in class.

Class time will be divided between these two sets of objectives as described in the table below. Because our model can only be done in class, that will take precedence, particularly in the earlier part of the course. Once we have figured out how things work, the amount of class time needed for the simulation should decrease, and more time will be spent on the other objectives.

Class participation, group and individual, will count 20% of your grade, each Graded Learning Opportunity will count 40% of your grade.

This syllabus represents my plan for the semester as of the first day of the semester. It is subject to change at my discretion. If you desire to see it modified to include additional material, or omit material which you believe has been adequately covered in some other course, please bring this to my attention as soon as possible.