I'm preparing an Astronomy course. I'm asking for a set of questions to organize...

L

laird

New member
...the course around.? I'm interesting in producing an entertaining course lasting 8-12 class hours, for smart educated older people with generally little background in astronomy I think I'd like to style the course around really great questions and use each session to cut quickly across the disciplines of a traditional astronomy course to answer the question.

I have the entire web at my disposal in class and I've already classified about 1000 links (in traditional classifications), ready for clicking.

In the first class I used "Digital Universe", a non-web based product to tour the universe. I highly recommend it, although it takes 2 weeks to learn how to fly through the universe.

But now I want to wow them some more with great questions and answers.

Here's some examples of the kind of responses I'd like to this query:

Are we alone?
What are the ways nature has contrived to kill us off?
Where did we come from?

(Thanks to previous answerers for your answers)


But I need smaller questions that lend themselves to being grouped into pieces of classes then classes then the whole course.

I could make an entire course out of just those 3 questions above.

I have a Ph.D. in Astronomy, 1972. Cornell. Under Carl Sagan.
 
Those 3 questions sound to me like more of cosmology and biology questions rather than astronomy questions.

For a course that is specific for astronomy, I'd recommend questions like:

1) How was the Big Bang inferred and what did it do? (Radio sound, expansion of the universe, etc.)

2) How do stars (and planetary systems) form and how do they evolve?

3) What are some of the ways we use to see how far away stars and galaxies are, how do they work, and how far can they measure?

4) What are the different kinds of things out there that astronomers take pictures of? (Planets, moons, galaxies, gas clouds lit by stars, groups of galaxies, explosion nebulas and other kinds of nebulas.)

5) How do we find out what kinds of atoms and chemical compounds are in stars, planets, and gas clouds?

6) How do stars get their energy?

7) What are the current mysteries of astronomy? (Black holes, quasars, dark matter, dark energy, whether the universe is open or closed, etc.)
 
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