High School Astronomy

[Beimao]

Has anyone used the book Astronomy: A self teaching guide in high school, and if so, how did you schedule it out?  I got it on recommendation of TWTM but I am struggling to divide it up into a course of study. 

[Lori D.]

No experience with that resource to be able to help, but... something in one of  these past threads might help -- they are all threads with people looking to set up a DIY high school Astronomy course. (These threads are all linked on PAGE 5 of the big pinned thread "High School Motherlode #2", under the SCIENCE heading, and then under "Astronomy" subheading.) Also, you might add @Garga's name to your thread title, as I believe she put together a 1-semester high school Astronomy course for her son a year or two back.

Astronomy?
Astronomy 
Astronomy Recommendations? 
High School Astronomy? 
Can you help me design an Astronomy course? 

BEST of luck! Warmly, Lori D.

Edited August 26, 2020 by Lori D.

[stlily]

Hi there,

My daughter will be studying Astronomy this year as well and she'll be using Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide. We'll be starting school the day after Labor Day so I'm working on a plan for the Astronomy guide and I can definitely share what I come up with. I have a couple of questions for you. This will help get a better idea of what you have in mind for your student's Astronomy study. Which edition of TWTM are you using (the older editions include a lose schedule you can follow)? Which edition of the self-teaching guide are you using? Finally, are  you planning to incorporate additional source readings in your child's study, as recommended in TWTM? Thanks.

[Beimao]

I have the 3rd edition of TWTM, which contains the very loose scheduling, but was hoping to schedule in more hands on work, videos, and possible field trips.  I'm also thinking we might cut back on the number of source readings to account for the added experiments (using Janice VanCleave's A+ Astronomy book).  I think the biggest hurdle I'm facing is trying to decide how to divide up the chapters and sections.  I have the 8th edition of the astronomy guide.  I would love to compare plans if you would like too!

10 hours ago, stlily said:

Hi there,

My daughter will be studying Astronomy this year as well and she'll be using Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide. We'll be starting school the day after Labor Day so I'm working on a plan for the Astronomy guide and I can definitely share what I come up with. I have a couple of questions for you. This will help get a better idea of what you have in mind for your student's Astronomy study. Which edition of TWTM are you using (the older editions include a lose schedule you can follow)? Which edition of the self-teaching guide are you using? Finally, are  you planning to incorporate additional source readings in your child's study, as recommended in TWTM? Thanks.

 

[EKS]

We used Understanding the Universe lectures from the Teaching Company.  The great thing about these lectures is that Filippenko's enthusiasm for the subject is so obvious (and contagious). 

We also used the textbook The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium, which is referenced in the notes for the lectures (and written by Filippenko and Pasachoff).  I had my son read the book and answer some of the questions at the ends of the chapters.  If I had it to do over again, I'd probably ditch the book and have him write short papers on topics of interest that he researched himself.

We did not read Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo.  That SWB recommends them shows that she is a historian and not a scientist.  I would instead find some good books about astronomy and have your student read those.  There are a ton of them, and they are far more likely to spark interest than scientific papers from 400+ years ago will.

In addition, we visited a planetarium and the local observatory and my son became a member of the astronomical association there.  

[Garga]

I’m Garga—Lori D tagged me above.  I’m going to cut and paste what I always share when someone has astronomy questions.  I didn’t use the book you’re using, OP, but I did use some other resources. You may or may not like what I used, but it might give you some ideas, especially since you mentioned doing hands on work and videos.  

The below is a cut and paste of the books I used, the videos we watched, and the activities we did:

 

Astronomy class 9th grade

 

Here's what I did for an Astronomy elective for my 9th grader.

 

Videos:

The Great Courses: Understanding the Universe (this was our "spine" with 96 half-hour lectures).  The professor is a well-known person in astronomy and this course is solid.  This one is currently full price at $680, so you'll want to wait for it to go on sale.

The Great Courses:  Our Night Sky.  This was a course about what you see outside at night.  There are 12 half-hour lectures.  This one is on sale right now for $24.95.

Khan academy:  https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/cosmology-and-astronomy.  I kept this link, but we ran out of time in our class to use it.  I estimated it has about 8 hours worth of content, but it's really hard to tell with Khan how long something is.  

 

Books:

"The Stars" H.A. Rey.  This is the man who wrote the Curious George books, but this isn't necessarily a child's book.  When I was researching this years ago, I saw that it was used at colleges, though it is written very simply and children could learn from it.  We used it for fun to round things out in the class. 

"Death by Black Hole" Neil deGrasse Tyson.  This was a collection of articles, so sometimes there would be repetition from article to article.  

"Rocket Boys" Homer Hickam.  This is an autobiography by a famous guy who works at NASA.  🙂  The book reads like a novel.  Very engrossing.  It was turned into a movie called "October Sky."  We watched the movie after reading the book.

I considered getting the text book written by the author of the "Understanding the Universe" Great Course that we used as a spine, but felt it would be too much for my student.

 

Meetings:

We joined the local astronomy club and attended monthly meetings.

 

Labs/Activities:  (Note:  I have just cut and pasted here from my notes.  So, there are a few personal notes interspersed below.  They might be helpful though, so I'm leaving them in.)

1*Phases of the moon (here's a video showing how we could do it.  Another one suggests doing it outside when the moon is visible in the daytime.)

In room with lamp one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz01pTvuMa0

Daytime one: http://astrosociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DaytimeMoon.pdf

Phases of the moon: how you can see a new moon at night.  https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/nasa/measuringuniverse/spacemath1/p/animate-phases-of-the-moon

 

2*If the entire hx of the universe was represented as a calendar, then when did certain events occur: http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/astro/act2/H2_Cosmic_Calendar.pdf

 

3*Remember the egg.  Teaches the eye to look for variations on smooth white surfaces.  http://www.astrosociety.org/education/remember-the-egg/

 

4*Light pollution (will look at the same constellation at different places to see if they can see more of the stars when it's darker. http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/publications/tnl/44/lightpoll4.html#4

?*Maybe: chart how a star's magnitude gets brighter and dimmer over a month of time. http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/publications/tnl/32/starscience3.html

 

5*High school level crater demonstrations. Need a bunch of supplies--may be difficult to find.

ENDED UP using flour and hot chocolate mix, marbles, and three other balls (ping pong, rubber, golf) without a slingshot.  Just dropped the balls into the flour filled pan and made the observations.  The supplies in the above link were a headache to find.

 

6*How high is space?  Calculate and make a drawing to actual scale.

http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/activities/I11_How_High_Space.pdf

 

7*Show a scale of how big the planets are AND how far the planets are from each other---we found a big parkinglot and drew the planets large in chalk to scale and then we walked the length of our street, stopping at intervals where the planets would be apart from each other to scale.  Pluto was in the field at the opposite end of the street.

*Show a scale of how far the planets are from each other, bigger.  Will take 1.6 miles of length: (LARGE)

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/index.html

Amazon link to feet measuring wheel so know how far to walk between planets.  https://www.amazon.com/1000FT-Walking-Counter-Survey-Measuring/dp/B004L181E6/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

FOR THE ABOVE:  we did the Large version.  First we went to an empty parking lot and drew a sun in chalk on the ground that was 10 foot in diameter and then filled in the planets to scale (they were tiny) inside our chalk drawing of the sun.  Next, we started at the top of our street and drew a sun that was only 5 inches across and walked about 1/4 mile, plotting how far the planets would be from the sun, to scale.  This was a favorite.  Especially when we got to the end of our 1/4 mile and I said, "Wanna keep walking to the nearest star?"  The boys said, "Yes!" and I said, "Then we'll be walking to Mom-Mom's house.  The one who lives in Arizona--2500 miles away!"  

If you want to keep the scale smaller, then these are smaller options:

Using 1 meter of paper. (SMALL)

http://astrosociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/PocketSolarSystem.pdf

*Show a scale of how far the planets are from each other using a 200 sheet roll of TP  (MEDIUM)

http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/family/materials/toiletpaper.pdf

 

8*See sunspots.  Use tracing paper to see how they change over a period of time.

 

9*Make a pan cookie using chocolate chips to create constellations from a template of actual constellations.

http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/family/materials/constellationcookies.pdf

 

10*Build our own spectroscope

http://www.livescience.com/41548-spectroscopy-science-fair-project.html

NOTE:  This one was a flop for us.  Update: No it wasn"t!  When we looked at a premade spectroscope, ours was fine.  !  We just didn't know what we were looking at. It's very subtle.

 

11*Make another astrolabe (or find in the bin downstairs.)

http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/AtHomeAstronomy/activity_07.html

[stlily]

Below, I've attached two schedules for Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide that I came up with. I'm probably going to be using Schedule B, if it'll work with the rest of the courses my daughter will be taking. Let me know what you think. I hope at least one of the schedules will be helpful. 🙂

Astronomy - A Self-Teaching Guide - Sample Schedules.docx

[Andromeda]

I used the Astronomy The Self Teaching Guide for astronomy - in 7th grade. There is no way in my opinion that it can be used alone to fulfill a high school science requirement. My 7th grader (at the time) finished the book in less than 6 months.

The way I scheduled it was very simple. I looked at the page count with content, not including titles, etc., and divided so that my student read about 20-30 pages per day. I don't remember the exact number of pages, but it was something like that. That work was not time consuming for my student even though we did outlining and note-taking/summarizing.

I would agree with @Garga above. In order to make that material worthy of a high school credit, I would do quite a bit more work especially if the course is going to count as one of lab courses toward graduation.

[Beimao]

15 hours ago, stlily said:

Below, I've attached two schedules for Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide that I came up with. I'm probably going to be using Schedule B, if it'll work with the rest of the courses my daughter will be taking. Let me know what you think. I hope at least one of the schedules will be helpful. 🙂

Astronomy - A Self-Teaching Guide - Sample Schedules.docx 51.26 kB · 4 downloads

This is fantastic, thank you so much for sharing!  I agree, I think I will use the general idea of schedule B since it leaves so much extra time for experiments, research and such.  I'm also planning to add in The Great Courses Plus: Understanding the Universe.  I don't think we will be watching them all, but definitely finding some that will enhance the chapters.  And hopefully the nearby planetarium will be able to be open by spring.

[Lanny]

If for some reason you eventually decide not to use that particular book...  When my DD was in TTUISD I remember the textbook they used (which I purchased used for DD on eBay) had been a Rental book in a CC in Western Iowa.  I think it was a 2 semester course in TTUISD.

Now, this semester, in university, she is taking a course in Astronomy. This is a link to the eBay listing for the textbook I bought for my DD on 03 August 2020.

  https://www.ebay.com/itm/Astronomy-Today-Volume-1-The-Solar-System-7th-Edition-by-Chaisson-Eric-McM/193519968043?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

I paid $5.90 including Shipping and NC Sales taxes and they shipped it in a cardboard box. Very reputable eBay Seller is one we bought things from for DD when she was in TTUISD (Lab Kits, etc.)

The Instructor had specified the 9th edition of the Astronomy textbook, but DD contacted him and he replied the next day that she could also use the 8th edition or the 7th edition. The 7th edition saved a lot of money 🙂