| INSTRUCTOR: |
Dr Derek Wills, Professor of Astronomy
RLM 17.204 471-1392 |
|
TEACHING
ASSISTANT: |
Joe Wang, astronomy graduate student
RLM 13.126 471-3308 |
| OFFICE HOURS: | Mine are 2:00-3:00 p.m., and Joe's are 10:30-11:30 a.m. If you can't come during these times, please ask us for an appointment at another time. |
| TEXTBOOK: | Discovering the Universe by W.J. Kaufmann III and Neil F. Comins (4th edition -- with or without the free CD-ROM). |
| GRADES: | There will be three in-class multiple-choice tests and a comprehensive final, all of equal length -- the best three of these four each count 2/7 of your course grade, and the remaining 1/7 comes from your total homework score. This grading system will not be changed -- there are no term papers, and no "extra credit" work at the last minute. The test dates are July 23, August 5, and August 15, and the final exam is on Monday August 18, 7:00-10:00 p.m. (the date and time set by the University). You don't need to take the final exam if you are happy with your grades on the three in-class tests; treat it just like a fourth test except that (a) it is comprehensive, and (b) university rules give you 3 hours in which to do it. If you had to miss an earlier test because of illness, forgetfulness, or whatever, the final is obviously worth taking -- you can never lower your grade by taking it, since you don't count it if you did better on the other three tests. |
| EXAMS: | These are based on material in the lectures, so study your notes when preparing for tests, rather than trying to memorize the book, which should be treated as a useful supplement to the lectures and not as a replacement. Make-up tests will not normally be given since you can miss one test and still count the other three for your course grade. I will hold a help session 5:30-6:30 p.m. the evening before each test; attendance is voluntary but strongly recommended. Please be warned that I do not tolerate cheating on tests -- the minimum penalty for this is an F in the course. Please bring photo IDs to the tests. |
| HOMEWORK: | Five homework sets will be assigned. Note that the total homework counts only 1/7 of your course grade -- the main point of assigning homework is to keep you thinking about the course material; if you do the homework by yourself you will get practise working with the material, and your real reward will come at the next in-class test or final, when you will be better prepared. Again, we do not tolerate any cheating or copying on the homework; if you copy someone else's work and turn it in as your own, you will have achieved nothing useful, except a zero for you both. Our TA will hold a help session for each HhomeworkW set, 5:30-6:30 p.m. the night before the homework is due; attendance is voluntary but recommended, and to get the best value from these sessions, you should try the homework by yourself first. |
| MATHEMATICS: | This is a science course, and you will have to do some math, especially on homework questions. The tests are mainly non-mathematical, and in any case, the techniques you need will be demonstrated in class. The type of math we will use should have been done in high school, even if you have forgotten it! |
|
GENERAL
COMMENTS: |
Keep up with the material as we go through the course. In this way you will be better prepared for the tests; just coasting along and then trying to memorize words from the textbook the night before a test is a sure way to disaster. If you are not understanding the material, please come along to our office hours and discuss your problems with us. The later you leave it, the harder it will be to catch up. We want you to enjoy this course, but that takes effort from you as well as from us. It is imperative that you come to class and pay attention (rather than just mindlessly copying down what gets written on the board) if you are to understand the course material. Paying for an outside tutor to explain things or buying lecture notes are very bad substitutes for actually understanding the material as it is presented in class. In any case, you should not need to pay a tutor to explain things to you -- the instructor and TA provide this service free, and you can also get help from the Learning Skills Center if you need some advice on study habits, test-taking, and so on. See syllabus. |
The following topics will be covered. Remember that you do not have to read all the material in each chapter, only what is covered in the lectures. Your notes will be the prime source for test studying.
| MAIN TOPICS | CHAPTER |
| scales and sizes, angles; parallax, the parsec (also pp. 226-227). | I |
| Earth's motions, seasons, precession, solar/sidereal time; the moon's orbit and phases (rotation and tides, pp. 127-128), eclipses | 1 |
| planetary motions, sidereal/synodic periods, Kepler's laws; mass and weight, Newton's laws, gravity, orbits | 2 |
| the EM spectrum (waves vs. photons), telescopes (optical, radio) | 3 |
| black-body radiation laws, spectral lines, the Bohr atom, the Doppler effect | 4 |
| the solar system -- individual planets and satellites, asteroids, meteors and comets. This will be done more briefly than in the book, and perhaps not at all if time is short. Read for your own interest, anyway! | 5-8 |
| stellar spectra and luminosities; the H-R diagram, binary stars, masses, radii, mass-luminosity relation; the sun, nuclear fusion | 10, (9) |
| birth of stars -- formation and evolution, star clusters | 11 |
| death of stars -- white dwarfs, supernovae, pulsars | 12 |
| black holes | 13 |
| our galaxy -- size, structure, mass, contents | 14 |
| other galaxies, Hubble's law | 15 |
| cosmology -- the background radiation, the future of the Universe | 17 |
| quasars and active galaxies (if we have time) | 16 |
The tests are multiple-choice, with 40 five-answer questions. I expect A/B/C/D to correspond to 30/25/20/15 correct answers. The homework counts 5 x 30 points, and your total will probably be divided by 4 to put it on about the same scale as the test scores. Tests count twice what the homework does, so to get your course grade, choose your three best scores out of Test 1/2/3 and the final, add those three together, double that, then add 1/4 of your total homework score. The A/B/C/D divisions then correspond to total points of 210/175/140/105. These totals are just 7 times those for individual tests graded out of 40. I may not keep strictly to these numbers, but that's the intention, and I will let you know if anything changes. If you perform at the level of 30 points per test (the A level), your total will be 2 x (30+30+30) from the tests and 30 from the homework, for a total of 210 -- which is again at the A level for the total score. As the course progresses, you can use the above information to see what scores you need to make on the remaining tests for various course grades. See Joe Wang or me if you don't understand how this works but you want to.