Students worked on the collaborative Google Doc about the solar system. This should form the outline to study for the solar system quiz on 5-17-11. The quiz will cover the formation of the solar system, planets, Kelper’s Laws, comets, asteroids, and meteoroids (meteors and meteorites).
Students finish up videos and discussion of minor members of the solar system (see 5-9-11). The end of year course survey is completed and then students begin to work on collaborative Google Doc on information on the planets.
Here are the heliocentric angles for the planets (all of them) as of 1997. Do the positions for Jupiter and Saturn that you determined for 2011 make sense? Note the slight difference in the diagram as 0 degrees is to the top.
Just got this note from Nick Fitzkee (YSHS Class of 1997) and had to share it. It made my day!
Hi Dr. Kuhn, Mr. Whiteley, and Mr. Martin,
I stopped by the high school on Monday, but the secretary said that I
had missed your planning periods. I wanted to let you know that I
have accepted a tenure-track position in the Chemistry Department at
Mississippi State University. I’ll be studying the HIV Integrase
protein using NMR spectroscopy as well as teaching biochemistry and
physical chemistry. It’s been a long time since high school (I was in
the class of ’97), but I feel a debt of gratitude to the science
department at York Suburban in getting me to this point. I felt very
prepared throughout college, but more importantly, my experiences at
Suburban gave me a curiosity and confidence to explore how the world
works. This was invaluable long after I had exhausted the content of
my high-school level classes. Thanks for your patience and for all
the hard work you spend in teaching. If you ever have any students
who are scientifically inclined and would like to ask about research
and teaching at the university level, please feel free to share my
email address with them.
I understand that Dr. Kuhn and Mr. Martin are retiring this year –
congratulations!
Thanks again,
Nick
Happy Star Wars Day – May the 4th be with you! Students completed heliocentric planetary position activity.Click on image below to see planets moving along the ecliptic and retrograde motion.
Students work on plotting planets positions for 1-1-11 and for 7-18-11 to better understand inferior conjunction and superior conjunction (for Mercury and Venus) and conjunction and opposition (for Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). Click on the image below for a really neat (I think so!) way to better understand conjunction, opposition, etc.
Today students completed the notes on Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion. Here is Carl Sagan’s explanation of Kepler’s Laws. The Earth’s orbit has an eccentricity of 0.02. What does this mean to you? Halley’s Comet has e = 0.967. What does this mean to you? Click on the image below for a neat interactive ellipse activity. Try looking at Halley”s Comet. Set e to 0.90 (can’t set it higher) and semi-major axis for 18 AU. Zoom out to see how it “falls” towards the sun.
Students complete the calculations for the eccentricity of three ellipses and then notes on the first two of Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion.
Students draw three ellipses using a string and push-pins. They measure the semi-major and semi-minor axes and then the eccentricity (e) of the ellipses. Elliptical Orbits Activity
