This group activity engages students in the calculation of absorption spectra. It is appropriate for any course covering the baseline mathematical concepts of atomic spectra, including chemistry, physics, astronomy, and related courses.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This is a first attempt at making an annotated list of plays and films that are specifically about astronomers. No claim is made for completeness and additional suggestions are most welcome. I don't list operas here. A list of astronomy operas is included in my topical listing of music inspired by astronomy at: http://bit.ly/astronomymusic
Material Type: Homework/Assignment, Reading, Student Guide, Teaching/Learning Strategy
These materials are generalizable to any STEM class. They were developed for Introductory Astronomy at Lane Community College. These assignments were developed with the Equity and Open Education Faculty Cohort, hosted by Open Oregon Educational Resources. The overarching goal is to broaden participation in STEM and increase student success by using creative portfolio assignments which connect course content with various dimensions of students’ lives. ASTR 121 - Astronomy of the Solar System 4 Credit(s) ASTR 121, 122 and 123, may be taken out of sequence. This sequence provides an in-depth and comprehensive introduction to the science of astronomy. These courses are designed to serve non-science majors, but also offer a good introduction for prospective science majors interested in Astrophysics or Space Science. These courses have a significant lab component. ASTR 121 focuses on naked-eye astronomy and the science of astronomy focused primarily on our solar system and comparative planetology, the Earth and its Moon, detailed consideration of the individual planets, solar system debris including comets and asteroids, and modeling the origin of our solar system. Lab included. Prerequisite: MTH 052 or MTH 060 or MTH 065 or MTH 070 or MTH 095 or MTH 111 or placement test. Learning Outcomes Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: 1. Think and communicate based on familiarity with a wide variety of physical phenomena involving the solar system and the means by which it is described and explained. 2. Think and communicate based on familiarity, in part through direct practice, with observational tools, chains of reasoning and exploration and knowledge of scientific methods that are part of the practice of this area of astronomy. 3. Correctly use scientific reasoning regarding the formation of the solar system, and think and communicate with significant basic conceptual understanding of systems involved in present-day terrestrial and Jovian planets. 4. Converse and comprehend making use of elementary descriptions and laws of mechanical motion and gravity applied to the motion of objects in our solar system. 5. Engage this area of astronomy with an active scientific literacy, which includes use of public resources widely available as part of large scale astronomy investigation. 6. Think and communicate based on an elementary understanding of exploration of the solar system, drawing conclusions from experimental data about possible explanations of physical mechanisms of the solar system and its constituent parts. 7. Formulate questions to move their thinking forward concerning the subject matter of the class. 8. Think and communicate with a familiarity with elementary applications of basic physics underlying the formation and structure of the solar system, as well as interplay of planetary systems such as plate tectonics, volcanic activity and atmospheric evolution. 8. Reflect and communicate on possible uses and impacts of this physics knowledge regarding the solar system. 9. Converse and write about the nature of science with increased sophistication and see physics/astronomy as a science, rather than a body of knowledge. 10. Appreciate that the insights provided by Classical Mechanics and Newtonian Gravity are valuable and useful even though physics has developed beyond Newtonian Gravity and Classical Mechanics and beyond mechanical theories - of which Classical Mechanics is a premier example. 11. Appreciate current efforts to create new insights in this area of astronomy and have a sense of currently open questions within the astrophysics community.
Material Type: Homework/Assignment
This annotated index includes a wide range of free, online labs appropriate for Astro 101 courses, organized by chapter of the OpenStax Astronomy textbook. So, you can look up free labs on Kepler's Laws, H-R diagram, the Drake Equation, and many other topics in introductory astronomy. These lab activities have been put on line by universities, NASA and NSF sponsored projects, and instructors who want to share their labs with colleagues. If we have missed any labs that are available free online, please suggest additions by emailing fraknoi@fhda.edu
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Module, Unit of Study
These are files that I have created for each chapter of the OpenStax Astronomy textbook. They are my summary of the chapter in outline/question form. I suggest that my students use these to review each chapter and the material in it that I feel to be most important. The files are provide through the link in Pages, Word and pdf format. Please feel free to use/modify any of these as you feel works best in your class.
Material Type: Lecture Notes
This file contains links to 15 YouTube videos that I have created to accompany the Nebraska Astronomy Applet Project labs. I use screen capture video to demonstrate the use of these labs. These are provided to my students who use the labs in an online course setting.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Astronomy students learn how to use the Hertsprung-Russel diagram by plotting stellar data. HR diagram then reveals evolutionary stage of stars.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This Motions of the Sun Lab is an interactive applet from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Astronomy Applet project.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
These are a set of lecture slide that I have created for the OpenStax astronomy textbook. For each chapter, there are between 2 and 4 sets of slides broken down into topics following the flow of the chapter. In each case, the slides come in three formats: Keynote, PowerPoint and pdf. Note that the slides were created using Keynote so there may be some minor formatting issues in the PowerPoint versions. Please feel free to use/modify any of these as you find useful for your classes.
Material Type: Lecture Notes
In this activity, students learn about astronomical phenomena we can see in the universe and create their own music inspired by astronomical images. By performing original musical improvisations, students enhance their knowledge of what astronomical phenomena are represented in images and experiment with creative ways of representing these using music. This activity engages students in first hand exploration of music and astronomy connections.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
The courses on this portal are or will be Zero-Textbook-Cost courses. Course faculty are creating and adopting teaching, learning and research materials that permit no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. The following course pages provide links to the syllabus and open course content, websites and learning tools: Biology SCB 201 – General Biology I Chemistry SCC 110 – Foundations of Chemistry SCC 201 – General Chemistry I SCC 202 – General Chemistry II Physics and Astronomy SCP 101 – Topics in Physics SCP 105 – Life in the Universe SCP 140 – Topics in Astronomy SCP 201 – Fundamentals of Physics I SCP 202 – Fundamentals of Physics II
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Full Course
These concept connection cards can be used in small groups or for self study. They help students build an understanding of three core topics in astronomy -- the HR diagram, light, and fusion. The file includes instructions for usage, as well as cards in multiple formats. They were created by Kaisa Young from Nicholls State University.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Even with the wide variety of topics offered by an introductory Astronomy class, students may not be 100% interested in the course content, and it is almost certain that a specific topic about which a student wishes to learn is not covered. To at least partly address these issues, to appeal to all of the students in this class, and to allow students to explore topics of their choice, a video project has been assigned to students at Albion College as a class activity. In this assignment, students are asked to create a video of a famous (or not) astronomer, astronomical object or discovery, or telescope observatory to present to the class. Students work in pairs to create a video that is original and imaginative and includes accurate scientific content. For this project, then, students use a familiar technology and exercise their creativity while learning a little (or a lot of) science along the way. Herein data on types and topics of videos, examples of videos, assignment requirements and grading rubrics, lessons learned, and student comments will be discussed and shared.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This updated resource suggests some of the best places on the web for astronomy instructors to obtain high-quality images for showing in class (and gives the direct URL for obtaining the photos). It includes general sources, such as the Hubble image gallery and NASA’s Planetary Photojournal, as well as more specific sources for a particular observatory or wavelength range.
Material Type: Reading
These activities cover topics in Galaxies and Cosmology, aligned with the OpenStax Astronomy textbook. Topics cover chapters 1, 5, 6, 24-30, and sections of chapter 17 and 19 concerning distance. All activities are designed to be done in small groups in the classroom, but most can be adapted for use as homework or projects. Quantitative and Hands-on activities may be used as labs. This is one part of an astronomy resource collection by Lane Community College. This collection was built by Andrea Goering (goeringa@lanecc.edu) and Richard Wagner (wagnerr@lanecc.edu), instructors of physics and astronomy at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, USA. Development of these resources was funded through LCC's OER Initiative (https://inside.lanecc.edu/oer). We'd love to hear about your use of these resources! Let us know what you're using, sign up for updates, and submit corrections, suggestions, or comments here: https://forms.gle/un49RUNs55GU3ZNF6 Find the full collection here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/142FgVMDHZ7bu53gihe3kJ_-5PzsnuzfMklJ1ZLMFk2E/edit#gid=315930953
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Full Course, Homework/Assignment
These interactive lecture slides cover topics in Galaxies and Cosmology, aligned with the the OpenStax Astronomy textbook. Topics cover chapters 1, 5, 6, 24-30, and sections of chapter 17 and 19 concerning distance. While aligned with topics in the textbook, slides are not a 1-to-1 mapping of the textbook and contain additional content, ideas, and discussion. Opportunities for active engagement and interaction using peer instruction techniques (think-pair-share and discussion questions) are built into the slides. References to related activities and labs are also included. Slides are provided as Google Slides documents for easy adaptation. Each chapter has a complete version of the slides along with separated slides for different topics in the chapter. This is one part of an astronomy resource collection by Lane Community College. This collection was built by Andrea Goering (goeringa@lanecc.edu) and Richard Wagner (wagnerr@lanecc.edu), instructors of physics and astronomy at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, USA. Development of these resources was funded through LCC's OER Initiative (https://inside.lanecc.edu/oer). We'd love to hear about your use of these resources! Let us know what you're using, sign up for updates, and submit corrections, suggestions, or comments here: https://forms.gle/un49RUNs55GU3ZNF6 Find the full collection here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/142FgVMDHZ7bu53gihe3kJ_-5PzsnuzfMklJ1ZLMFk2E/edit#gid=315930953
Material Type: Full Course
This course focuses on three particularly interesting areas of astronomy that are advancing very rapidly: Extra-Solar Planets, Black Holes, and Dark Energy. Particular attention is paid to current projects that promise to improve our understanding significantly over the next few years. The course explores not just what is known, but what is currently not known, and how astronomers are going about trying to find out.
Material Type: Full Course
ofrece las ltimas noticias de la ciencia. La clase de jueves proporciona nuevos planes y actividades de la leccin basados en una historia actual del ttulo y conecta la ltima investigacin de NASA con la instruccin. Pasados asuntos incluyen Buck Rogers, Cuidado!, Adis a la MIR, Despus de tres intentos, se retira La Nia?, y ms.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Diagram/Illustration, Lecture, Lesson Plan, Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study
Textbook for ASTRON 102 THE SOLAR SYSTEM at College of the Canyons Surveys the solar system, including the earth and its motions and seasons; the moon, eclipses, and tides; the content and dynamics of the solar system; planets and their satellites, asteroids, comets, and meteorites; and the evolution of the solar system.
Material Type: Textbook
Example wiki assignment for Canvas
Material Type: Homework/Assignment
