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Activities for Credit
There are several ways to earn participation credits through activities outside of class. These include:
- Star Parties
Attending
Star Parties that are sponsored by the Astronomy Department on Wednesday, Friday, and
Saturday evenings when the sky is sufficiently clear for viewing through telescopes. In order to get credit
for attending a Star party, you must ask the person presiding for an official signed slip, and turn it in to
the professor or T.A. Details about the star parties are available
here.
- Article Write-ups
This option may be helpful for those whose schedules don't allow them to attend evening events such as
star parties or special lectures. The assignment is to find an article in a newspaper, magazine, or authoritative
web-site on a topic that is relevant to this course. (The professor is the final judge on whether an article is from
a reliable source and is on a relevant topic.) Turn in a hard copy of the article, plus a short essay in your own
words summarizing the article and relating it to the content of Ast 309N. The essay should be less than 1 page.
This assignment can earn you up to 2 points of participation credit, depending on its accuracy and quality, and
there will be three opportunities to do this activity over the whole semester.
- Book Report
You can read the book "Einstein's Cosmos: How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed our Understanding of
Space and Time," by Michio Kaku, a paperback published in 2004 by W.W. Norton & Company (ISBN 0-393-32700-0;
paperback) and write a short book report. The report should be 2-3 pages typed, double-spaced, and should summarize
and discuss - in your own words (resist the temptation to plagiarize or even give long quotations) - the physical principles
described in the book. (I do not want a critique of the writing style, nor a synopsis of the events in Einstein's life.)
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