critique my astronomy plan?

[SilverMoon]

While I find astronomy fascinating I feel like I barely know anything about it. :tongue_smilie: Any glaring holes? Something you'd drop? Fabulous suggestions to add?

 

This will be an elective science for a 9th grader who will also be taking physics and the primary science course for an 8th grader.

 

Spine: Understanding the Universe by Filippenko DVDs (2nd edition), using guidebook questions (mixture of oral and written responses) 2x/week

 

Extra reading: Filippenko's textbook, Illustrated Brief History of Time (Hawking), The Universe in a Nutshell (Hawking), and .... ? - I haven't looked over the guidebook suggestions yet.(They've already listened to the Bryson book in the car.)

 

Extra DVDs: Through the Wormhole, Cosmos, NOVA specials, etc

 

Skywatching 1x/week: The Stargazer's Handbook: An Atlas of the Night Sky (full color photographs), 365 Starry Nights (b/w drawings), a decent telescope with various lenses, WorldWide Telescope app, ideas from some of Garga's astronomy activities post

 

There's an astronomy club that shares their telescopes at a park once a month, and we'll go to 2-3 earth and space open houses at ASU.

Edited May 17, 2017 by SilverMoon

[chiguirre]

Not a critique, but maybe a useful resource:

 

https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-solar-systems-astronomy-asux-ast111x-4

 

starts June 12

[SilverMoon]

That looks interesting! Thanks. :)

[8filltheheart]

Filippenko has a textbook that works well with the TC lectures. https://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Astronomy-Millennium-AceAstronomyTM-Virtual/dp/049501303X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495035005&sr=1-3

[Corraleno]

While I find astronomy fascinating I feel like I barely know anything about it. :tongue_smilie: Any glaring holes? Something you'd drop? Fabulous suggestions to add?

 

This will be an elective science for a 9th grader who will also be taking physics and the primary science course for an 8th grader.

 

Spine: Understanding the Universe by Filippenko DVDs (2nd edition), using guidebook questions (mixture of oral and written responses) 2x/week

 

Extra reading: Filippenko's textbook, Illustrated Brief History of Time (Hawking), The Universe in a Nutshell (Hawking), and .... ? - I haven't looked over the guidebook suggestions yet.(They've already listened to the Bryson book in the car.)

 

Extra DVDs: Through the Wormhole, Cosmos, NOVA specials, etc

 

Skywatching 1x/week: The Stargazer's Handbook: An Atlas of the Night Sky (full color photographs), 365 Starry Nights (b/w drawings), a decent telescope with various lenses, WorldWide Telescope app, ideas from some of Garga's astronomy activities post

 

There's an astronomy club that shares their telescopes at a park once a month, and we'll go to 2-3 earth and space open houses at ASU.

 

This is almost exactly what DS did for 9th grade, minus the Hawking books. It was his favorite science class by far! The Filippenko lectures are really meaty and DS spent a fair bit of time self-teaching some of the physics and math he needed to really get the concepts. Lots of pausing and taking notes, too, and rewatching some lectures. He had well over 100 hours just with the DVD course.

 

The text we used (not sure if it was Filippenko's or another intro astro book) had "lab" assignments using the WWT. We also attended three or four astro club viewing parties (each one was 2-3 hours late at night outside the city for best viewing), and also saw several shows at planetariums in different cities (one was on Mayan astronomy, which was really cool). There's a great app for the iPad where you can point it at the sky and it shows what's there (that you can't see). We owned a small telescope and some really good binoculars, and I bought a Galileoscope that we put together; that also came with instructions for some cool experiments with the optics. Between the WWT labs, the "star parties" with the local astronomy club, and the Galileoscope, I felt it definitely qualified as a lab science.

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[SilverMoon]

I've got the Filippenko textbook in our extra reading! Old posts suggest it's a great one.

 

Stephen Hawking started the reading list because DS really likes him. I thought about adding some astronaut and/or rocket scientist bios, but I might lump those into his history.

Very encouraging, Corraleno! Thank you. Validating....lol. I looked up old posts and found a post from you mentioning Discovering the Essential Universe as the text with the WWT assignments. That sounds like a great addition.

[SilverMoon]

Are you in an area where you can easily observe The Great American Eclipse on 8/21?  If so, I would try to do something involving that, since the next good observable one in the US isn't until 2024, and even then will miss a good part of the country. 

 

Nope. We're southwest. According to the maps we'll see it at 0.7 magnitude.