Stellar Spectra Lab--20 points

Today, we will do the lab found here


Gather the stellar spectra of 5 stars and then classify into the OBAFGKM matrix. Hand in your data.

Annie Cannon and her spectra -10 pts

Imagine you have one task to which you spend your ENTIRE life in dedication. What would you do? Annie Cannon chose to spend her life studying spectra, and a biography appears here

Your blog post today tells me of your biggest dream or passion at this point in your life....who knows, maybe you will be remembered for more than 400000 contributions, as she was...

THREE LABS BEFORE THANKSGIVING BREAK--60 points

The following activities are to be done before you leave for Christmas break.
#1 SOLAR ASTRONOMY

Click on “blackbody spectrum” in the simulations library. The curve in the simulator represents the amount of light (or flux), emitted versus the wavelength of light for an object of a given temperature. The horizontal axis gives the wavelength of light in nanometers.
Use the slider to try different temperatures of your choice and observe how these changes affect the continuous spectrum. In particular, try the solar temperature: 5800K. Note that you can vary both the horizontal and vertical scale. Try to demonstrate Wien's Law and show why hot stars appear predominantly blue while cool stars seem red. Also demonstrate the Stefan-Boltzmann Law to show that the total energy emitted by a hot object increases at a much faster rate than its temperature. Describe your best simulations and your interpretations on a blog post.

#2 SOLAR SCAVENGER HUNT--20 POINTS
Helpful video found here


Go to the Stanford Solar Center, print the sheet, and fill it in.

#3 Black Holes

Go to the Black Hole site and explore. When you get done, make a blog post that does the following:

1. Distinguishes between an event horizon and an accretion zone of a black hole.

2. Defines escape velocity, black hole, and the speed of light.

3. Explains the relationship between escape velocity, black hole, and the speed of light.

4. Identifies more than one single type of black hole.

5. List evidence that our understanding of black holes has changed.

6. Explain how Hubble Space Telescope's component cameras assist in the search for black holes.

7. List at least 2 myths about black holes that are discredited.

Wednesday, 11/19/08--Learning the Proton Rap -20 points

The goal for today is to figure out the proton-proton chain.  There are lots of places you can look, but I like here, here, and here (alright, the last one is not a link, it's a rap).

Create a product of some sort that allows me to check your knowledge.  This can be a poem, a video on your cell phone, a song, a gcast.com (go ahead, go there, and check it out), or a creative story telling the adventures of hydrogen man/woman.  This is due at the beginning of class on Friday.  You may have ONE partner, if you choose

The Ghost Particle...

Today, you will be watching the Ghost particle. After each section, you will answer the two questions provided by the teacher...


1. What is a neutrino and how was it first proposed?
2. Give other examples of things you can't see but you know from evidence exist.



3. What does radioactivity have to do with the sun??
4. What did John Bahcall do?



5. Ray Davis was trying to create an experiment where neutrinos changed chlorine to argon atoms. Where was his setup located.
6. What was the problem happening with his experiment?


7. How many flavors of neutrinos are there?
8. How did neutrino oscillation vindicate the work of Ray Davis?



9.What is the Sudbury mine and where is it located?
10. What does it do for Ray and John's experiment?

11. Why did John Bahcall feel like dancing?
12. What is your passion? What would you be willing to spend 30 years studying, even if it meant that other people didn't believe your viewpoint was right?

Escape from the Sun...

Go to CLEA and get the lab from here

Login and turn the layers ON for at least one trial for each Part.

Part A: Run the flow situation for a photon. Record the data in terms of # of layers vs. interactions. Collect data for 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 layers

As the number of layers increases, what happens to the number of interactions? Is this a linear relationship, or an exponential relationship? How do you know?

Part B: Run the flow situation for a diffusion, and record the data as you did in Part A.

How did the data change when we had larger numbers of photons? Is this data more accurate or less accurate than that collected in Part A? Why do you think so?

Part C: Run the EXPERIMENT. The red cylinder represents the atmosphere, the line drawing at the right represents your eye, and the light at the left represents a photon leaving the light source.

Collect data for photons at 1.5 eV, 1.8 eV, 2.0 eV, 2.3 eV and 2.5 eV. Notice as you adjust the energy, you also adjust the wavelength.

Create a table as follows:

Energy (ev) Wavelength (nm) Photons sent Photons detected



As the energy of a photon increases, what happens to its wavelength? As the energy of a photon increases, what pattern is present for the number of photons detected? Why?


Part D: Run the EXPERIMENT again, but this time, set the photon energy level at 2.2 eV, and change the gas the element is traveling through.

This time, your table should look like this:

Energy (eV) Wavelength (nm) Gas Atoms Photons Sent Photons Detected

What effect do the different types of gas atoms have on the # of photons detected? What would this have to do with a line spectra? If you changed the energy of the photons and ran the experiment again and again, do you think you would continually get the same patterns? Why or why not?


This lab/class activity is due as a post on your blog on 9/24/2008.

It's the End of the World as We Know it.....or not

Read the article found at universetoday.com and see what you think about the 2012 Doomsday prophecies...

Blog about the possibility of killer solar flares after you read.  Thanks!

You also may want to bookmark spaceweather.com, space.com and Soho as you try to 'safely' see the Sun.

Spaceweather and Asteroids...15 points

Go to Spaceweather and explore the site to check out solar weather, auroras, and Near Earth Objects.  Do you think that we should spend a lot of time worrying about asteroids, given the technology we have to detect them?  Consider Tunguska, Shoemaker-Levy 9, and the asteroid belt in your blog post, and use specific examples.  The post  should be 2-3 paragraphs.  Blogs will be graded on Saturday, 11/15, and this will be the last post I will grade for the period.

The world of Plate tectonics..using playdoh modeling....15 points

Find out about the layers of the earth by examination of the layers here

In class, we created a model of a divergent, convergent, and transverse (or transform or strike-slip faults, depending on the book) using a layered model of playdoh.

Now, use a blog post and answer the following:
1. What is the importance of each of the following terms...


a) Pangaea
b) Sea floor spreading
c) Plate boundaries
d) the ring of fire (Hawaii to Japan)
e) a mid-ocean ridge
f) a shifting north and south pole

2. What do volcanoes on the Moon and Mars tell us about those planets?

3. Go to the GPS time series and find out the motion rates for the following locations:

DUBO

HILO

KELY

HOFN

What does this tell you about the movement of the continents?

4. Find out about the devastating tsunami after Christmas in 2004 by going here. What effects did this have on the rotation of the Earth, the shape of the Earth, the shape of the ocean where it originated, and the energy released by the earthquake.

5. Wegener and his theory of plate tectonics was not accepted until after he died. What are three pieces of evidence for the idea?

The moons of Jupiter Lab-20 points

Today we will be doing a simulation lab in a group.  You will need the lab Revolutions of the Moons of Jupiter, found on your computer or here


Run the simulation for the four moons of Jupiter for 30 days.  We will print the data attained in a graph format.

After class discussion, you need to put a 2 paragraph reflection on your blog, discussing:

a) the periods of the four moons
b) the graphical pictures attained
c) the difficulty Galileo must have had with a 10x telescope
d) why the 'mini-system' Galileo saw influenced his heliocentric viewpoint.

All the pieces of the total...20 points

Pick one of the following:  Mercury, Venus, Mars, the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Oort Cloud, the Kuiper belt, comets, or killer asteroids.  Find a video in English from unitedstreaming.com or Youtube and embed it in your blog.  Summarize the video, and provide information about the size of the object(s) in comparison to Earth (8000 mi/diameter), its distance to the Sun, space exploration efforts, weight on this object in comparison to Earth (if you can find it), and material composition (metal, water, rock, etc.).  You may wish to Google  "Your weight on other worlds" or go to 9 Planets for more help

Wednesday, 11/5/08

TEST POSTPONED TO FRIDAY. STUDY, in particular, the astronomy contributions of Aristotle, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Galileo.

Today, we start our study of the solar system. To do this, we need to understand gravity and Kepler's laws. Print a copy of the documents found here and here

You will be going to the simulation found here.

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When you get done, please watch the video clip and then make a post on your blog about your impressions of the lab and the size of the planets. A blog post is usually 4-6 sentences as a minimum.