Notes for Lecture 1
ASTR 10, Descriptive Astronomy (V0076)
Spring Semester, 2004
Instructor: Dr. Korpela

Updated

• HOMEWORK #1 is due Jan 29.
• EXAM #1 is Mar 04. Those who need a makeup must contact Dr. Korpela by Feb 16 to arrange an EARLIER date.

Details on Upcoming Dates:

The first Homework Assignment will be due in class January 29, 2004. If you don't yet have a text, much of the material required for Homework #1 is contained in the handouts, and the remainder can be found in the (different) online textbook at http://www.astronomynotes.com.

Upcoming exams:

• If you cannot make one of these dates, please arrange an alternate time
• The exams will be more like the quizzes than the homeworks, in that it will be multiple choice, true/false, and short answer. Rather than just read the textbook without particular focus, use the "What Was Important" guides to focus your studying. In addition, the homework solutions, in-class exercises, ConcepTest questions, and quiz questions highlight topics I find particularly important.

• Exam #1 will be March 04. Makeup exams for Exam #1 MUST be completed prior to the originally scheduled exam date. Please contact Dr. Korpela prior to Feb 16 if you need to reschedule.

Last Thursday Night's Lecture:

Last night's lecture notes may be found here (powerpoint) or here (html). .

Last night I handed out the Course Syllabus, some general Policies, and "Hints on How to Succeed in a College Class" .

I also handed out several handouts.

Find out what the goals of last night's lecture were in the What Was Important notes. Some more details are found below.

We briefly discussed the nature of science, but will discuss more of that handout next week.

We discussed Scientific Notation and Units. In addition to the handout available here, the appendices of your textbook contains information on the metric system. We won't be doing much math at all, but if you are at any point worried about math, I have listed a few (random) math links here.

If you weren't around to see the Powers of 10 video, an online (somewhat different) version may be found here. Unanimated references on the Powers of Ten are at powersof10.com and A Question of Scale.

We attempted to create a scale model of the Solar System, to give you a sense of the scale of the objects in the universe. The solutions to this (graded) in-class activity are available here. For those who wanted to see how the scale models were constructed, or are just worried about converting from one set of units to another, I have given some sample calculations in the Unit Convertsion handout. I know this exercise was difficult for some people. I'll try to review some of the concepts next week.

We also adjusted the scale model to help us envision objects beyond our Solar System. Finally, we discussed (in brief), the history of the universe, and made a "cosmic calendar". Details of these topics are available in the handout on Scale Models and Cosmic Calendar.