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 problems caused by the atmosphere for telescope observing, Earth, and the impacted worlds: the moon, and Mercury.
Describe something you found interesting from the assigned textbook reading or presentation preview, and explain why this was personally interesting for you.
"I found the video on the Keck telescopes in Hawaii functioning very interesting, seeing all of the parts moving in step for everything to work properly."
"I find the concept of light pollution unfortunate. Stars are beautiful, and it's a shame that one has to travel somewhere remote and dark just to appreciate them in their entirety." Why the stars twinkle. I've never put much thought into the 'why' factor and thought it was pretty interesting."
"Infrared radiation was interesting to me, I never knew that our eyes were not sensitive to it but that our skin feels the heat from it."
"I did not know that the ocean absorbed carbon dioxide and then recycled it back into Earth's mantle. This was making me feel better about global warming until further reading explained it cannot recycle the extremely high amounts caused from man-made pollution."
"It was interesting to think of the air in the atmosphere when looking at space as analogous to swimming and the water above when looking at the surface."
"The similarities between the moon and Mercury interesting because they show how alike the two of them are even though the moon is not a planet."
"That Earth has the hottest core (compared to smaller terrestrial planets) which is why volcanic and tectonic plate motion activity is still possible."
"How the primary source of the greenhouse gasses is volcanic activity. I had always thought most of greenhouse gasses had come from man-made things."
"The 'greenhouse effect,' because it's something I haven't really heard about prior to this presentation."
"The concept of atmospheric turbulence, because I have never thought of that before."
Describe something you found confusing from the assigned textbook reading or presentation preview, and explain why this was personally confusing for you.
"I found the analogy between looking up from underwater to looking up at the stars from Earth confusing."
"The active and adaptive optics had me very confused. I don't understand what they do and what they accomplish by doing it."
"I did not understand how active or adaptive optics worked. I did not get what about moving the mirrors created the effect of stabalizing an image."
"How carbon dioxide enters and how is taken out. I read that section twice to understand better, but I'm still confuse. little bit of introduction in class will be perfect."
"The large impact hypothesis. I don't understand how two things can collide and merge rather than just blow up."
"The oldest and youngest features on the moon and Mercury, because I couldn't really figure it out."
Stars to appear to "twinkle" in the night sky because of...
"There is turbulence in the atmosphere that distorts our view so that's why stars appear to 'twinkle.'"
"The stars appear to twinkle because we are under a large amount of air."
"Therefore any kind of movement or turbulence will distort our view and make the stars look like they are twinkling."
"They are against a dark background"
"They get old or they are too far away."
"I need explanations on this topic because I don't understand it at all."
A large modern optical telescope in outer space would have images with better __________ than a comparable ground-based telescope.
brightness. *** [3] resolution. *********** [11] magnification. [1] (None of the above choices.) * [1] (Two of the above choices.) **** [4] (All of the above choices.) ** [2] (Unsure/guessing/lost/help!) ***** [5]
Identify how carbon dioxide enters and how it is taken out of Earth's atmosphere.
(Only correct responses shown.)
Enters atmosphere from: volcanoes [67%]
Taken out of atmosphere by: oceans [56%]
(Only correct responses shown.)
Craters partially filled in with flat lava plains: oldest (formed longest ago) [44%]
Flat lava plains: middle [37%]
Craters on top of flat lava plains: youngest (formed most recently) [63%]
(Only correct responses shown.)
Large crater basins: oldest (formed longest ago) [41%]
Lava-filled lowlands: middle [48%]
Long curving ridges: youngest (formed most recently) [59%]
Ask the instructor an anonymous question, or make a comment. Selected questions/comments may be discussed in class.
"I find the concept of light pollution unfortunate. Stars are beautiful, and it's a shame that one has to travel somewhere remote and dark just to appreciate them in their entirety." (I know exactly how you feel.)
"Another thing I found interesting was how Earth has it's own natural process of controlling the amount of greenhouses gases that are in the atmosphere! (Of course, our existence is emitting more greenhouse gases than it can handle.)"
"Still a little confused in answering the questions as they are asked here." (You can always check the answers to these questions by clicking the Twitter #CuestaAstr210 hashtag link in the homework announcements box.)
"Why do we still chop down trees and plants when they are saving us?" (More importantly, if we need to use trees and plants, why are we not re-planting them after chopping them down?)
"What was your inspiration for your facial hair design?" (This cat: Hamilton, the Hipster Cat.)
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