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Fun and Interactive Introductory Astronomy Course by Rick

Dive into the basics of astronomy with Rick Nolthenius in an engaging and interactive course. From Earth's rotation to cosmic mysteries, explore the universe with practical quizzes and fun clicker questions to enhance your learning experience.

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Fun and Interactive Introductory Astronomy Course by Rick

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  1. Astro 10: Introductory Astronomy *Rick Nolthenius Call me “Rick”. (“Mr. Nolthenius” sounds… unappealing!) *Office: 706a 479-6506 *email: rinolthe@cabrillo.edu *visit my extremely excellent website!

  2. Textbook – “Pathways to Astronomy” – Schneider S. and Arny T. • $98 in the bookstore Maybe you can find used editions elsewhere on the web? • One copy on reserve in the library

  3. Grading • 7 mult. choice quizzes based on text. - ~10 questions each - closed notes • 2 video quizzes, after seeing ~1 hr video program. Take notes and use them for your mult. choice quiz, ~13 questions each • Final Exam: 50 mult. choice questions. You may have a single 8x10 sheet of paper crammed with all the notes you can muster! • Lowest score dropped. Will drop 2 quizzes but ONLY if both are no-show’s • Because…No make-ups • Extra Credit possibilities • Buy 11 green narrow scantron sheets from the book store. $3. Cheap! Keep them in your notebook along with a pencil.

  4. New this year… clickers! • After the first 2 weeks, we’ll have impromptu questions during the lectures, to monitor your “absorptivity”. Sometimes, you’ll have a couple minutes to conference with your immediate classmate neighbors and then click your answer. Some are “freebies”, and don’t count, some do, and you’ll know which at the time given. • It’s fun! It’s interactive! And it’ll help you on the regular quizzes. Can’t say at this moment how many questions or how often we’ll do this. This is new for me too. • Some of the questions will be directly taken from your upcoming quiz or final. • Attendence important for doing well, and the clickers will help me monitor this. Attendence per se will not be a factor in your final grade • My current plan is - Your cumulative score on all questions answered with the clickers will count as another quiz, with the same weight (or so is my current plan). This is the “8th quiz” as it were.

  5. What will we Do in Astro 10? • We start with the earth and sky, how the rotating earth and orbiting earth make the sky show the patterns it does. • Seasons, eclipses, some history. • A session in the Cabrillo Planetarium, complete with spooky music! • My own “Chapter 0” on the principles of clear thinking and scientific method • Then to boldly go, on to the planets and the stars! • And Onward, to the Galaxy and Beyond • To the Universe as a whole, the origin of our Universe, parallel universes, Inflation and the quantum origin, and how the existence of life says profound things about the nature of the Universe. • I’ll stress the observational facts and how we use scientific inference to arrive at ideas, and to test them to home in on our current theories of the Universe. • Exams will stress getting a picture of processes and the ‘why’ behind what we see, not much on memorized factoids.

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