Making Telescopes

Post date: Jan 8, 2016 9:40:18 PM

I love the space unit but sometimes it's hard to make it as 'authentic' because there's so much of the material that is inaccessible. One thing that I find really helps students understand more about how telescopes work is to actually build them. Students get experience forming images and measuring focal lengths for each lens and put it together to make a basic telescope.

We do some work with the scopes, estimating then calculating the magnification but really, the best part is finding something practical to create in this unit - students also gain appreciation for the work that is involved in creating and perfecting telescopes.