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Course Goals | |
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Course Goals | |
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| Instructor: Scott Hildreth | email: shildreth@clpccd.cc.ca.us |
| Office: 2013 | Office Phone: (510) 723 - 7468 |
Office Hours: Thursday Evenings before the lab, 5:30 - 6:30 PM; Also M-W-F 11:30 AM - Noon in my office. You can also make an appointment to see me at another time that fits your schedule. If you ever come by and miss me, please leave a note with your name, phone number, and the best time to reach you, and I will call you back.
I will check my email mutliple times a day - if you have to miss a class or have questions, that is the best way to reach me.
Text: Hildreth & Smith, Practical Astronomy Labs, 2002 Edition
Equipment: Edmund Scientific Star & Planet Locator (or equivalent); a calculator with scientific notation (exponents); colored pens or pencils.
This 1-unit lab is designed to help you understand astronomy, learn how to use telescopes, make scientific observations, and enjoy the stars and constellations. We will be learning about astronomical calculations, and experimental techniques; in addition, we will have an opportunity to use the telescopes to observe celestial bodies. Astronomy 30 satisfies the general education science laboratory requirement, as coupled with ISLS, will give you both the science lecture AND lab units required for transfer to UC or CSU as well as most other four-year schools.
Course Description:
Astronomy 30 is a laboratory class, not lecture; I will not spend a great deal of time reviewing concepts from the lecture classes. The exercises you will work on require patience, careful measurement, efficient group work, and active collaboration with lab partners. Science today is often done by groups of people working together, sharing data and hypotheses as they search for order in the universe. I strongly encourage you to work with others - the class is not graded on a curve, and you aren't competing with your classmates.
Requirements:
Each member of the group should participate in gathering data and answering questions. Each person must turn in their own data sheets. Along with the data, each person should turn in a short 2-3 paragraph review of the activity, along with the names of all group members, and the date and title of the assignment.
Like ISLS, this lab is graded "holistically", meaning that your attendance, participation, diligence, and progress over the term matter as well as the quality of each individual effort put forth in any particular lab. Labs assignments will be assessed on a scale that includes the results of the exercise and your individual lab summaries. Attendance & active participation in the activity also matters. Arriving late or simpy copying work from your lab partners could mean you will not earn credit for an activity.
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Data & review turned in on time, with date & group members listed. All questions answered correctly, and summary reviews are thorough, thoughtful, and useful. |
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Data & review turned in on time, with date & group members listed. All questions answered, mostly correct, and/or the summary review is OK. |
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Data or review late/missing. Most questions answered, but some blanks are left, and/or the summary is missing or incomplete. |
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At the end of the semester, I'll assign an overall lab grade based on both your average assessment over all of the assigned activities, and your progress in the class. If you have missed activities, please keep track of them and inquire whether you might make them up to improve your standing in the class. Note that depending upon the weather and the activity, it may not be possible for you to make up something you miss, and no guarantee is offered that you will be to make up any or all missing activities.
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Requirements |
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including up to two assignments missed. |
You can record your lab activities on the form in the lab manual; please try to keep careful track of what assignments you have turned in, who you worked with, and what assessments you received.
I do not want a formal lab "write-up" each week. Instead, I need to understand whether your time was well spent. Please don't tell me what you did, or review the goals of the lab. Your reviews should address the following questions:
a) What was the best part of this activity? What did you learn? Did the lab help you understand material from the lecture class?
b) What was not enjoyable in this activity? Why? What would you suggest to make the lab even better?
c) Each lab has a major topic or concept that will serve as the primary goal for your experimentation. But every lab also is intended to illustrate how science works, too. How did tonight's activity help you understand the process of science? In particular, what pieces of the scientific "method" were involved, or played a significant part in the activity, and what did you learn about them?
The summaries are meant to help me improve the labs for future classes by incorporating your suggestions and criticisms. Feel free to be honest! You won't hurt my feelings (much!) by telling me you had trouble or did not enjoy an activity. But telling me how to make it so that you would enjoy it will certainly earn you a good score for the review and the lab.
You must be present and actively participating in a lab to get credit for the activity. If you are going to miss a lab, please notify me ahead of time, and I will see if you can possibly do the work during another lab class. It may be possible for you to attend one of the other lab sections, but depending upon the weather and schedule, those classes may not be working on the same exercise that we would. Please check with me first.
If you are forced to miss a class, you must make up the work by the final day of the class, or take a zero for that lab activity (and possibly drop that grade). You are responsible for turning in your lab reports no later than one week after we finish the lab. If you are going to miss a lab, please drop off the previous week's work, or give it to a friend to turn in for you no later than one day after the lab; late work will receive a 50% reduced score (at best a "2").
You may turn in your homework, extra credit assignments, and any other questions, in whatever method is most convenient for you. Assignments are due in class at the start of the period, but you can also:
· Leave them with me during office hours, or slide them under my office door
· Use email -- Send your review in an email message, not as an attachment. I'll acknowledge receipt when I see your work.
Astronomy 30 Lab Review Examples
To give you a better idea of the kind of reviews I am looking for, here are two examples:
A Good Review....
Date: 1/25/02 Simple Telescope Lab
Lab Partners: Larry, Jian, Hidenari, Amy
"I found this activity to be much more difficult than I had
anticipated, but by the end, things were starting to make much
more sense. What I liked best was going outside with the telescopes,
and learning how to use the telescope controls to move around
and center the stars. I also liked your quizzing us on the stars,
but we don't know them that well yet, so expecting us to remember
all of the names isn't quite fair. But I am getting better at
it!"
"What was most difficult for me was the math ratios; I need to go more slowly, and have more examples in the notebook. But my group really helped, and two of my partners were great in explaining how they got the angular sizes. I don't think I can do a new problem, but I think I see how to set it up.
"My suggested improvements to the lab include more telescopes, so that we don't have to wait quite as long. And more examples in the notebook for math problems. Also, we need to space the telescopes farther apart so that other people don't trip over ours and we can avoid their motions affecting our view. I would also like to know what stars are up in the sky before we go outside so that I know what to look for. Oh, and more hot chocolate! "
"The significant thing this lab taught me about science was the need for mathematical abilities (in the research stage) and patience (in the outside experiment stage). It was hard to locate some of the stars and frustrating that we didn't know them as well as we would like."
And a not so useful review...
"I really liked tonight's activity. We used the telescopes to measure how much the star's shifted, and timed the star's motions. Then we used the math formulas to figure out the telescope field. My lab partners and I felt like we did everything right, and our numbers came out really good. I'd like to do more outside with the telescope."
Notice that the first review touched on all three of the desired questions, did not simply repeat what the lab title and goal was, and showed that the author thought about the activity, and suggested improvements. And it included the date, title, and group members. The second review did not include date, title, and participants, nor did it address the questions, and did not help me to see whether the author really got something positive out of the experience.
NOTE!
Please note that just getting the "right" answers on the lab is not sufficient. I expect you to get all of the answers correct by talking with your partners, and collaborating with other groups. You need to critically analyze your work and the activity itself, to obtain excellent grades on the entire lab.
Please Dress Warmly! We will be outside on clear nights for up to two hours, so wear warm socks, gloves, and a hat to keep you comfortable!