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None! Notes, suggested readings on reserve in libraries, (hopefully on-line as well)
Grading:
Homework Sets: 40% of grade
Hour Tests (3 of them): 40%
Class Presentation: 20%
Final Exam: 0% (last Hour Test during the final exam period)
Subject Matter, Goals, and Miscellaneous Comments
What is it? Who am I speaking to? Astronomy 352K is a junior/senior-level introduction to stellar astronomy
and astrophysics, with emphasis on observational and empirical methods for
studying stars via the light they emit.
It is designed mainly for upper-division astronomy majors, but it
is also suitable for students majoring in closely related fields
such as physics, mathematics, or engineering.
Prerequisites? The prerequisites for AST 352K are Physics 316 (Electricity & Magnetism)
and its associated lab course Physics 116L, which have as their prerequisites
Physics 301 (Mechanics) and 101L, and relevant math courses.
It is acceptable to have taken instead the Engineering Physics courses
303K and 303L, with their lab courses.
Astronomy draws on such a wide variety of areas in physics that we cannot
expect you to have prior preparation in all of them, and so we will
introduce physical ideas and laws as needed.
(Examples include the theory of radiation, atomic structure, and
statistical mechanics.)
We will usually be interested mainly in applying physical principles,
rather than in deep and lengthy derivations, and in general the
mathematical manipulations expected of you (e.g., on
homework sets) will be pretty straightforward.
