The first in the two-course sequence, this course focuses on the fundamentals of astronomy by focusing on understanding the nature of light, motion, and gravity. The course charts the historical development and advancement of these theories from the times of Babylonians to Newton to learn about the "Scientific Method" in development of these theories.
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Course Outline and Lecture Slides
A Survey of the Universe: A broad survey of the universe to understand our place in the Universe.
A Quest to Making Sense of the Pattern in the Sky: Tracing key developments/advances in theoretical and observational astronomy from Babylonians to Greeks to Galileo.
View from the Earth: Understanding the motion of the Sun, Moon, and Stars including phenomena like Eclipses and Phases of the Moon. Learn about coordinate systems, angular size, distances, and Parallax.
Motion and Gravity: Application of Newton's Three Laws of Motion and Newton's Law of Gravity to understand forces and motions in astronomy.
Light_A Cosmic Messenger: Characterize light waves to understand the relation between wavelength, frequency, temperature, and color. Learn about the interaction of light and matter, particularly, the emission, absorption, and scattering of light. Characterize light sources using light spectroscopy and Doppler shift.
Sun and the Solar System: Characterize the solar spectrum and the composition of the Sun; learn about the various layers of the Sun, prominent solar features, and related solar activities. Discuss the nuclear fusion that powers the Sun. For the solar system, we will examine its layout and classify the planets based on their location. We will also discuss asteroids, comets, meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites.
Use of NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) to supplement/reinforce topics covered in class and introduce students to
Exciting/interesting topics in astronomy not covered in the course.
Latest developement/advances in modern astronomy and related topics
End of Semester Self-Assessment: A one-page (minimum) write-up where students re-trace what they have learned in the class and reflect upon them. Student feedback is used to expand/improve the course in future.
End of Term Project: These are open-ended projects that encourages students to interpret, expand and/or re-imagine ideas/concepts learned in class to topics of their interest. They broadly fall into two categories:
Write-up/research papers: These typically expand on the ideas covered in class. Past submissions have explored a wide range of topics, such as the future of space travel, the space race and the Cold War, exoplanet searches, engineering challenges, science fiction, ethnomusicology, and a criminal case study, among others.
Creative submissions: These include poetry (often contemplating the grandeur of nature and birth and death, science and faith, story of Laika), paintings (some exploring the life and works of scientists or depicting the grandeur of nature), 3D illustrations, 3D printing, comic book ideas, etc.