Astronomy for 9th grade - Alex Filippenko

[mazakaal]

Ds asked to study astronomy for his science credit this year. He's a reluctant learner, so I'm happy to follow his lead as much as possible. I have Great Courses Plus, and Understanding the Universe seems to be highly recommended, so I decided to use that for the core of his studies and then learned that Filippenko has a text. I've just received the new edition of it and discovered good comprehension questions at the end of every chapter. I'd like to have ds either answer those questions or do the questions in the guidebook for the GC videos just to make sure that he's paying attention and learning something. I'm just wondering if there is a place to find an answer key to either of those so that I don't have to basically do the whole course myself to find the answers. Any ideas? 

[EKS]

I would not have him do the questions in The Cosmos because the book is more detailed than the lectures and doesn't totally line up, so unless you're also planning to have him read the text, it would be hit or miss which questions were relevant.  So you'd end up having to watch the lectures anyway to figure out which questions were appropriate. 

Frankly, I would sit with him to watch the lectures, and then discuss the questions in the guidebook.  Then have him choose one of those questions to answer thoughtfully in writing (depending on the question, 1-3 paragraphs).  If he has trouble with writing, you could also use this time to help him organize his thoughts for his written response--when I did this with my kids, I would make notes on a small whiteboard while we talked which they could then use while writing.   

To round out the class, instead of spending time reading a textbook, you could assign supplemental reading on topics that you think would interest him (there are lots of fascinating books about astronomy to choose from).  You could also have him watch some of the many documentaries available. 

[mazakaal]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was planning to have him read the book on days that he's not watching one of the GC videos, so he'd hopefully get through a good portion of it over the course of the year.

I understand what you say about watching with him and discussing. I had just hoped that this would be one subject that he could do mostly on his own. I'll need to work closely with him on literature and worldview. I had hoped that science would be one of the subjects that didn't require too much of my time.

Thanks for your input, though. I'll give it some thought.

[Farrar]

I don't know this textbook, but you can find solutions for most popular high school/college textbooks on Grave Saver or Chegg. Be careful - sometimes the answers are off because they're crowdsourced, I think - they're not written by the textbook folks. But they're generally enough to keep you on track to check your own work.

[mazakaal]

36 minutes ago, Farrar said:

I don't know this textbook, but you can find solutions for most popular high school/college textbooks on Grave Saver or Chegg. Be careful - sometimes the answers are off because they're crowdsourced, I think - they're not written by the textbook folks. But they're generally enough to keep you on track to check your own work.

Thanks!

I found answers on Chegg but for the 4th edition, and I've got the 5th edition. Maybe I shouldn't have waited for that latest edition to come out! Now to decide if I should register with Chegg and hope that the questions haven't changed too much between the editions. 🤣