Individualized Instruction (INI) |
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AST 1040 - Introductory Astronomy - Section 200 |
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Instructor: Timothy Holst Instructor E-mail: tholst@d.umn.edu Term: Spring 2008 Date Range: 16 weeks beginning January 22, 2008 or date of registration if after January 22, 2008. Refer to the Course Completion Table for your start and end dates. |
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| Course Level: Undergraduate Credits: 3 Course Delivery: Correspondence Registration Deadline: May 9, 2008 |
Cost per undergraduate credit: $296.15 Additional fees may apply Prerequisites: None Additional Info: A-F only; meets LE req of LE CAT5 |
Description: Survey of present knowledge of solar system, interstellar space, stars, galaxies, and universe. Historical development of astronomy as a science. |
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Required Textbooks: Textbooks can be purchased from the UMD Bookstore Horizons, Exploring the Universe, 9th Edition (Wadsworth, 2006), Seeds, Michael. (or any recent edition) Study Guide and Workbook (1994, 2006), Holst, Timothy. This is available electronically from the instructor or by hardcopy in the bookstore. |
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Course Welcome from Instructor: You may sign up for this course at any time. This is an INI course, not an “online” course. You may submit all work electronically by email paste-in or attachment, but the exams are taken in the instructor’s office. Distance exam-proctoring arrangements have sometimes been available. If you sign up for the course, you should get a confirmation email from CE and the instructor. If you do not, e-mail tholst@d.umn.edu. Briefly About the Course Course Expectations Assignments, Questions, and Exams If you prefer, you may submit homework electronically. Send an email request to Dr. Holst (tholst@d.umn.edu) and he will email to you an attachment file with the questions; or simply enter your answers (carefully numbered) into any word processing program, paste into an email message, or add as an attachment and send to Dr. Holst. If you do not prefer email, when you have completed the assigned questions for a subsection, remove the sheets from your study guide, PUT YOUR NAME, AND A LOCAL (CAMPUS OR OFF CAMPUS) ADDRESS ON THE ASSIGNMENT, send to Tim Holst, 140 Engr Bldg, 1303 Ordean Court, Duluth, MN 55812, (or you may bring them to the CSE Office, 140 Engr Bldg). They will be returned to you as promptly as possible. If you wish to discuss anything with Dr. Holst, he may be reached at 726-7807, leave a voice mail message after hours. Perhaps the best method for communication in this course is email. Send any question to tholst@d.umn.edu. The three exams (15% of course grade each) will be designed to be easily completed in an hour; you may find they take you considerably less. They will not require much writing on your part, but will be very concise, designed to ensure that you have a basic grasp of the various concepts. Please arrange to take the exams by sending an email to Dr. Holst, or a phone call. You will be required to complete all the subsection assignments prior to taking the section exams. Upon completion of the each of the first two exams, you will be told approximately what course grade you are currently earning. Upon completion of the last of the three exams, your final course grade will be assigned, and submitted using the UM electronic system. You will be able to view your grade online the next day. If you complete the course by the end of the term you sign up for it, a grade will be turned in with final grade reports. Otherwise, an “I” grade will be assigned, and a change of grade processed when you complete the course work. For any I grade entered, the UM system automatically converts an I grade into an F grade 53 weeks after the I grade was first entered. It is possible to change the F grade to the grade you earn after that time, upon course completion, but waiting that long to complete the course is strongly discouraged. Brief Introduction to Course Material In this course, we will take an exploratory tour through the science of astronomy, one of the most fascinating subjects around. There will be plenty of “wow, cool” types of subjects such as black holes, supernovae, string theory, and the origin of the universe, as well as incredible looks at details of the planets in the solar system we have recently discovered. We will also lay out the basics of classical astronomy, including such concepts as why the sky looks like it does (and what it looks like, for those of you who haven’t taken detailed notice), what causes seasons on the earth, why there are phases of the moon, and what time it is on Sesame Street (I mean this literally---timekeeping is an important subject in astronomy). “Astron” comes from the word for star in Greek, and “nomus” means rule or law, so fundamentally astronomy is the science that deals with the celestial bodies, and the relationships, or “natural laws” that exist between them and govern their motion and evolution. Astronomy tries to answer the questions: “What is the universe like?” “Where did it come from?” and “What is its destiny?” It is my hope that at the end of the course you know more about the various topics we shall cover than you do now. I have further hope for the accomplishment of two additional goals: First, that you develop an appreciation for and awe of what you see when you look up at night, and second that you develop a feeling for what science is, and what critical thinking means to a scientist. I hope we can discover a number of examples of the latter during the course. The course is divided into three main sections, Classical Astronomy--The View From the Earth, The Solar System, and Beyond the Solar System. A more detailed outline of the various sections is given below, in several versions, for various editions of the textbook (Seeds) that you may have. Page numbers of handbook (this book) material, question page numbers, and an approximate timetable for completion of the course in 16 weeks, is also given. Read the handbook and the pages indicated in Seeds before attempting to answer the questions in the assignments. The handbook is intended to be a supplement to the text, in the same way that lectures would be in a course that was not an independent study course. As such, it is very detailed in some areas where the text is less detailed, and vice versa. Thus, the discussions in the handbook are rather long for some of the early topics in the course, but very cursory in later topics where the textbook is very detailed. About the Instructor |
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DISABILITY ACCESS STATEMENT To request disability accommodations, please contact: Catherine Rackliffe For more information on disability services and resources at UMD, please check out http://www.d.umn.edu/access/. |
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