Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA
Students have a weekly online reading assignment (hosted by SurveyMonkey.com), where they answer questions based on reading their textbook, material covered in previous lectures, opinion questions, and/or asking (anonymous) questions or making (anonymous) comments. Full credit is given for completing the online reading assignment before next week's lecture, regardless if whether their answers are correct/incorrect. Selected results/questions/comments are addressed by the instructor at the start of the following lecture.
The following questions were asked on reading textbook chapters and previewing presentations on eclipses, and an preliminary overview of the history of astronomy.
Selected/edited responses are given below.
Describe something you found interesting from the assigned textbook reading or presentation preview, and explain why this was personally interesting for you.
"An eclipse can only happen if two things are going on. That is, the moon must be new or full and the moon's orbit must be aligned edge-on. I find this particularly interesting because it is not as common as it seems, and makes me think more deeply about how things in space must be aligned in order to see a certain sight (like an solar eclipse)."
"How an observer can distinguish between a moon to be eclipsed and one not to be eclipsed by the appearance of the edges of a full moon. I found this interesting because it's simple. One doesn't need a deep grasp of scientific concepts."
"The types of astronomers--scientific, non scientific, movers, and disprovers--I didn't know there were different types of astronomers."
"Lunar eclipses--I didn't realize there was one I guess...or maybe I was just more familiar with the solar kind."
"Learning about the past astronomers--it was cool to me to see how long people have been inquiring about the sky, and how long it took for people to agree that the sun is the center of the universe."
"The sun 'eclipsing' the moon means that the sun is being hidden by the moon. I didn't know what the term "eclipse" meant before this."
"How Galileo did not invent the telescope, he just used them in his studies."
Describe something you found confusing from the assigned textbook reading or presentation preview, and explain why this was personally confusing for you.
"How the phase of the moon has an effect on solar and lunar eclipse. And how to predict the next time one will happen."
"Having a hard time understanding eclipses, and would appreciate some class time dedicated to them."
"The correlation between umbra and penumbra, and total and partial eclipses."
"I need more review with the timing of an eclipse--the orbit alignment and the phases of the moon. I found this confusing because I wasn't sure if I was correctly identifying (on the simulation) when an eclipse would occur."
Match the phase of the moon during these eclipse types. (Only correct responses shown.)
Total solar eclipse: new moon [76%]
Partial solar eclipse: new moon [50%]
Annular solar eclipse: new moon [57%]
Total lunar eclipse: full moon [87%]
Partial lunar eclipse: full moon [62%]
Place these astronomers in chronological order of their historical contribution to astronomy. (Only correct responses shown.)
Aristotle [92%]
Ptolemy [74%]
Copernicus [76%]
Tycho [66%]
Kepler [66%]
Galileo [58%]
Newton [84%]
Match these terms with their descriptions. (Only correct responses shown.)
Ideas accepted as truth without further examination: first principles [84%]
Predictions that could be tested by observations: hypotheses [76%]
Universal statements of cause and effect: rational laws [92%]
Describe phenomena without explaining why it occurs: empirical laws [73%]
Ask the instructor an anonymous question, or make a comment. Selected questions/comments may be discussed in class.
"I wish that more solar eclipses were closer to the Central Coast." (Me, too.)
"It was hard to remember exactly what we learned last class because of the three-day weekend." (And we have a lot more long weekends off later this semester!)
"The discoveries that these important astronomers made are huge for the explanation of humanity but then they realized that a lot of their theories and hypothesis were wrong, do you think some day we'll look back and realize that we've been wrong with a lot of the actual theories?" (Yes, eventually. We may also be dead before that happens.)
"How much detail will we need to know about each of the astronomers? Will we need to just know the order of them?" (You will need to know their contribution to developing astronomy as a science, whether their contributions were scientific or non-scientific, and as movers or disprovers.)
No comments:
Post a Comment