Thursday and Friday, 9/29 and 9/30

I love to listen Garrison Keillor. He is an amazing storyteller that can make things that are ordinary come to life. Above, try listening to the first minute of his story about ice fishing.

Your job today is to research three stories from all sorts of telescope data and reinterpret them through a story. There are lots of stories in this website, but you need to be able to work with me to interpret three of them so they are interesting to a non-scientist. This may be through a children's story, a flip video narrative, or a musical story. NOTE: This will NOT be done by Monday....Friday is too short of a day.

http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/groundup/


Era stories:


Story 1
Galileo's Refractor: Galileo's telescope revealed the first hint of the depths of space. His dedication and approach to explaining what he saw revolutionized astronomy. (Includes one telescope story, one biography.)


Early Refractors: Telescopes with flatter lenses brought wider and clearer views of the sky but required longer tubes. Some refractors were so long that they became difficult to maneuver. (Includes two telescope stories.)


Great Refractors: New technology allowed astronomers to create larger lenses that produced bright, clear images. For a while, refracting telescopes became more popular than reflecting telescopes. (Includes three telescope stories, one biography.)

Story 2
Newton's Telescope: Sir Isaac Newton replaced the main lens of a telescope with a mirror, creating the reflecting telescope. (Includes one telescope story.)


Early Reflectors: Early reflecting telescopes used metal mirrors to look deep into space, but the new design presented new challenges. (Includes four telescope stories, one biography.)


Hugh Reflectors: Astronomers crafted telescope mirrors from glass instead of metal, making reflecting telescopes more powerful and easier to use. They began relying on photography and instruments to record observations. (Includes three telescope stories, two biographies.)


Story 3
Solar Telescopes: Solar telescopes are reflecting telescopes that use special instruments to observe the Sun. (Includes one telescope story, one biography.)


Radio Telescopes: The discovery of radio waves from space launched a new branch of study: radio astronomy. This spurred astronomers to develop new techniques to accommodate the large size of radio waves. (Includes two telescope stories.)


Multi-mirror Telescopes: Multi-mirror telescopes used computer technology to overcome the size limits of huge reflecting telescopes. (Includes two telescope stories, one biography.)


Space Telescopes: By placing telescopes in orbit above Earth, astronomers were finally free to view the universe in all wavelengths of light. (Includes five telescope stories, two biographies.)

Send me a text at 5636081900 at the end of the hour so you can share your progress.

The Photoelectric Effect, CCDs, and the Legacy of Einstein

Pictures of CCD(interactive on buildiing a CCD)

CCD Lab

Using the CCD Lab, answer the following.

1.  You want to put together a space telescope.  To start with, you decide you need to check out the metal surface of your CCD.   What surface(s) could you use to detect the following  types of light at 100% intensity (make a table as shown below)?

Surface Metal      x-rays      purple        blue     green   yellow     orange      red
sodium
zinc
platinum
copper
calcium

2.  Now, decide which metal you will use for the primary CCD telescope.   Now, check the wavelength range at various intensities  (10%, 20%, 40%, 80%, 100%) using the table below?    How effective will this telescope be for bright objects?   Dim objects?

Intensity                     10%                20%                  40%                  80%                100%

Wavelength range


3.  Take a look at the values of current for a 75% intensity light on a platinum surfaceand write the current into the table below..

Wavelength vs. Current

100nm       200nm       300nm       400nm        500nm         600nm           700nm



What does the data in #3 tell you about the effectiveness of a CCD for ALL wavelengths of lights?   How would an alloy try to deal with this value?



4.  If you were to construct a space telescope, would you have more than one telescope available on a platform?   Explain your reasoning.


Turn in this sheet INDIVIDUALLY at the end of the hour.9

Understanding Neutrinos on Monday, 9/26/11

Davis experiment

John Bahcall


Create a project that explains why neutrinos are important, how they affect the proton-proton chain, the experiment that was done using the work of Davis and Bahcall, and current experiments. The work may include collaboration, but your project must be one of these individual forms.

* a video post (use a webcam and upload to Youtube)
* an online timeline (use capzles)
* an online story (storify)
* an online series of reflections using shared (Google Docs)
* a poster (Pinterest)
* an organized series of post-its (linoit)

Tomorrow, we will finish our notes on the sun.

Tuesday, 9/20/2011

Today, we're trying to understand some of our sun's effects including gravity. GROUPS OF THREE OR LESS. Larger groups of work will NOT be accepted

Task 1: Complete the work shown here to get an idea of how gravity affects multiple orbiting objects. Write a 1/2 page reflection on your findings.

Task 2: Watch the video




Task 3: Complete the activity on sunspots You will need to paint the pixels and print the resulting graph. If you can't print the graph, take a screen shot of this (the PrtSc) button on your computer and paste into Paint. Save as a jpg and email to me.

Quiz

Please take a short quiz here

Unit 3 notes

Survival on another Planet

A common scenario provided by NASA is to think about ways to survive a crash on the Moon. That activity is provided here, and the answer sheet is found below it. Brainstorm your ideas as a team.


Now, pick the most habitable place of the three you compared in the previous assignment. YOU define what is habitable.


Use http://www.solarsystemscope.com to figure the current distance in AU between the Earth and this place.

Figure out how long it would take a ship that could travel 24000 miles/day to travel, one way, to your destination?


Links of Interest

Living in Space
Spacesuits
Space Hygiene
Toilets in Space
Space Food
Space Food 2



Unit 2 Review

Telescopes, Retrograde Motion, and the Moons of Jupiter

Retrograde motion




We learned about the different features of telescopes, including

universal time
local time
right ascension
declination
slewing
tracking
wide and fine viewers

Chapter 2 Notes

The associated powerpoint slides for this unit are available.   I will run them for you on request.


Or, you can view them here.

Planetary Research

How are the planets alike and how are they different?
We need to consider:

• weight
• gravity
• atmosphere
• plate tectonics
• water
• wind
• crust
• moons
• distance from sun
• length of a year
• length of revolution vs. length of rotation

Yikes!   Too much information.   Can we break this down?


Collaborative research

Friday, 9/2/2011

You've been working at your projects for two days.  Some of you are done, some of you are confused, some of you need to finish that project today.

That's fine.


On Monday, we'll be starting the second unit, which is gaining an understanding of how our solar system formed, how big it is, and the characteristics we notice.   It's this observation that leads to science.   Your goal will be to find out about the core and the surface of each of the planets by going here and to find out the length of one year for each of the planets by using your book.  Other questions may be answered
Do you see patterns?
How does that relate to density or the time it takes for a planet to spin on its axis?
Are there patterns in the materials that make up each of the planets, or are they random?
What about patterns in the moons?
Is water found on each planet?

I'm sure there are more questions we will think of as we do this, but this is our starting point.

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