Section #: 612319
Class Time: TR 5:00PM - 6:40PM
Room: 7/272

Instructor: Douglas H. Laurence
Office: 7/135
Office Hours: Here

Course Materials:

Textbook: "Astronomy: The Universe at a Glance," by Chaisson and McMillian. ISBN: 9780321799760

Other Materials: Two Scantron sheets, one for the midterm and one for the final.

Course Content:

This course will cover the contents in the following chapters of the textbook:

• Ch 1: The Night Sky
• Ch 2: Light and Telescopes
• Ch 3: The Solar System
• Ch 4: Earth and its Moon
• Ch 5: The Eight Planets
• Ch 8: The Sun
• Ch 9: Measuring the Stars
• Ch 10: Star Formation and Evolution
• Ch 11: Stellar Explosions
• Ch 12: Black Holes
• Ch 13: The Milky Way Galaxy
• Ch 14: Galaxies
• Ch 15: Cosmology and the Universe

Coursework:

This course will be graded in four, equally weighted parts: homework, quizzes, a midterm, and a (non-cumulative) final. The homework will be assigned semi-regularly. Homework will typically be in the form of answering some question I ask in class, which will require you to do a little bit of research on the topic, and come up with an answer to the question. The quizzes will be given weekly in class. Each quiz will be given at the end of the first lecture of the week. A quiz will consist of 2 multiple choice questions based on the material covered in the previous week. The midterm will be on the material covered in the first half of the course, and the final will be on the material covered in the second half of the course; the final will not be cumulative. Each exam will have the same format: roughly 40 multiple choice questions, to be filled out on a Scantron sheet. It is very important that you buy two Scantron sheets for the course: one for the midterm and one for the final.

Tentative Course Schedule: