Syllabus: Short Official Version: Which includes the syllabus-irequired UNLV Academic Policies for Students.
Wave your hand or just speak up as seems appropriate.
Now that we haved done the RECOMMENDED
Transparent Course Summary, on with the
details of the course.
Yours truly
does NOT like to do that after a semester has started, but sometimes small
adjustments or even large ones are needed.
Any large one will be called to the attention of the students
by email and during the class periods.
The syllabus is always a little preliminary.
And the much shorter official
syllabus is at
URL
At the beginning of the semester, there are always a few people going to the wrong
Bigelow building and wondering what's wrong.
The two buildings are just across the boulevard
from each other---they have slightly different light cones.
See the preview on light cones in
the figure below
(local link /
general link: light_cone.html).
Yours truly likes previews since it is too tedious to cover topics
in strictly logical order.
Though NOT required, it is best for
students to email instructors
using their Rebelmail accounts.
This can always be done with Canvas (unlv),
but note that emails via
Canvas (unlv) sometimes run slow,
and so sending outside Canvas (unlv)
is often better.
Note that
the courses Ast 103
and Ast 104
are both stand-alone courses.
Neither the one nor the other is a pre/corequisite for the other or the one.
If you would like to take both, you could take them in any order or at the same time.
The first part of both courses can be much the same depending on the instructor's choice of topics.
Often the first part is the basics of astronomy: e.g.,
the celestial sphere,
constellations,
phases of the Moon,
the history of astronomy,
and the necessary background physics material.
So taking both courses may give the student a double dose of some topics.
The pre/corequisite can be waived at the discretion of
the lab coordinator for
Ast 105 who is me.
My role as lab coordinator is completely separate from role as instructor of
Ast 103
and Ast 104.
See
Introductory Astronomy Laboratory (AKA astlab) Course Website / Extended Syllabus: Ast 105
for more on Ast 105.
You can find
Introductory Astronomy Laboratory (AKA astlab) Course Website / Extended Syllabus: Ast 105
by googling
"david jeffery astlab unlv",
but it may NOT be the first item.
If you need to a lab course, see
MyUNLV: Search and search on "ast".
We will start
IAL 0: A Philosophical and Historical
Introduction to Astronomy today.
So you'll get a closer look at
IALs
in just a bit.
IAL
is the unified source---it is ONE-STOP SHOPPING---it is the
course textbook,
student
notes,
my notes, and the lecturing tool.
Students do NOT need to take
notes at all.
But note-taking
probably helps with maintaining alertness and learning the material even if
students never looks at their
notes again.
What of copyrighted material in the
IALs?
For better or worse, all the writing is yours truly's own, except for short
quotes which are explicitly indicated as such.
What of images? Like in the figure below
(local link /
general link: hubble_ultra_deep_field.html).
Naturally, NASA is a main source for
IAL.
But finding NASA images is actually tricky since
NASA seems to never have invented
an easy-to-use, one-stop-shopping image archive.
NASA Images
may be the closest to that.
See Wikipedia: Internet archive: NASA images
for a brief, vastly incomplete, and probably
out of date discussion of NASA
image resources.
Wikipedia articles are actually
a pretty good sources for NASA images.
Good ones for topics have already been selected.
You could also just go googling for images.
Giving proper credit and permission is ethically required.
Also, the value of an image depends very much on its
provenance---where it came from, who made it,
what is its authority.
Why Planetary Systems for a title
rather than the traditional Solar System?
When we only knew one
planetary system,
the Solar System,
the Solar System could be viewed
as a field just by itself.
But NOT now when we know
so much about other planetary systems.
In science we are always trying to
make our understanding more general.
The more general understanding of the
Solar System is one that sees it in the context
of planetary systems in general.
So the field of the Solar System has been
subsumed in the more general field of
planetary systems.
The new title Planetary Systems reflects this
scienfitic evolution.
The facts to learn go on and on---jillions
of them.
How do you do it?
As mentioned above under Tasks,
no one can memorize jillions
of isolated facts---you learn the
narratives in which those facts
turn up and the narratives cue you for the facts.
A little algebra, a little
geometry.
Roughly 10 % or less of the questions will involve math.
No need to react with shock and awe---like the
Medieval scholars shown
in the figure below
(local link /
general link: lady_geometry.html)
To help with the math component, there is a
math refresher:
IAL 1:
Scientific Notation, Units, Math, Angles, Plots, Motion, Orbits---which is actually the
2nd
IAL
since there is a zeroth
IAL:
IAL 0:
A Philosophical and Historical Introduction to Astronomy.
Is this a hard course
or an easy course?
Somewhere in between.
It's easy in that there are NO essays,
NO course projects, and all exam questions are
multiple-choice questions.
But it's hard in that it is extensive---those
jillions of facts.
But as I always say, it's
nothing like organic chemistry.
There are two streams:
For either stream, a good approach is to do the
reading-homework-self-testing
for an
IAL
first and then listen to the lecture.
You get the detailed lengthy presentation and then the abbreviated, simplified one
in other words.
For lecturing, yours truly uses
IALs
as a lecturing tool.
Note
IAL
has a complete narrative as must have in order to be the course textbook.
I will just scroll through most of the words---those are for the
student's private reading.
The length of the break for group activity depends
a bit on what's in it and how it goes.
See group activity below.
For in-person-instruction courses,
in summer semester 90-minute periods, there will be
a bit of break after the group activity---which will be 40 to 50 minutes
after the class start time.
For the remote instruction course,
we will usually have two 5-to-10-minute breaks.
There will be two of these---just like in the figure below
(local link /
general link: testing.html).
All questions will be multiple-choice and, as aforesaid,
typically about 50--70 % will be drawn from the homeworks.
The exams consist of 72 multiple-choice questions and you have 75 minutes.
The material covered on each exam is specified below in
section Exam Schedule.
See the note on
Device Use
during exams.
For in-person-instruction courses,
the in-class exams consist of 50 multiple-choice questions and will occur in
the first 50 minutes before the ordinary 5-or-so-minute break
(see Summer Semester Qualification 1).
After the break, we will just resume with an ordinary class period.
It's sort of sickening to have a class period just after a exam, but that's the
summer semester for you.
There will be NO group activities
on in-class exam days.
It will be comprehensive and two hours long.
"Comprehensive" means all
IAL
readings
are included---except for explicit exceptions.
See Final Exam Information.
The final
will be similar to the in-class exams, but with 100
multiple-choice questions,
and so is ∼ 40% longer---except for the
summer semester, it's 100 % longer.
The
IALs
covered since the last in-class exams MAY be given a somewhat heavier
weighting than earlier
IALs.
The longer the interval since the last in-class exam,
the likelier there will be a heavier weighting.
See the note on
Device Use
during exams.
Why a comprehensive final?
Well, remember a course is about learning.
A comprehensive final is part of the learning process.
The student
is obliged to comprehend the whole course at once.
To see big picture and how the parts fit in to the
big picture:
see the big picture
in the figure below
(local link /
general link: sistine_chapel_ceiling.html).
From an evaluation point of view, a comprehensive final
puts more weight on understanding than the in-class exams
where pure memorization is a somewhat more feasible strategy.
See
Rules for Remote Instruction Exams/Quizzes.
EOF
Notes on Exams:
Students are required to supply their own
scantrons with
spaces for at least 100 questions for all exams.
See also the note on Device Use during
tests.
For IPI courses,
the summer semester final
will be 90 minutes and will be held in the last scheduled class period
in the regular classroom,
unless other arrangements are made
by the instructor.
See Rules for Remote Instruction Exams/Quizzes.
If you are unprepared because of illness, that is a valid reason.
The 5 marked items, their weightings, and their drops are given in the table below:
The 3 marked items, their
weightings, and their drops are given in the table below:
From the front an audience looks
like in the figure below
(local link /
general link: audience.html):
some are attentative, some are asleep.
It's hard to fall completely behind if you attend class.
And there is lots of evidence that good attendance correlates
with achievement---but don't ask me to produce this evidence---it's
what deans tell me---and
Kenneth Sufka
too.
The rationale for the simplifed scale is that it is unfair to use a completely fixed scale
when the difficulty of exams varies
and
people report
reading-homework-self-testings at various times and
some report quite late.
So trying to distribute letter grades above satisfactory in a consistent way becomes difficult.
But final grades are on the 12-point scale as discussed in the next item.
The particular needs of individual
students CANNOT influence
the grade line choice
Usually, yours truly
uses the 12-point scale: A,A-,B+,B,B-,C+,C,C-,D+,D,D-,F.
So the grades are NOT all A's and B's.
There will be C's.
And note that yours truly is rather
parsimonious about A's---just being in the upper third of the class is NOT enough.
Yours truly will submit MIDTERM GRADES
(by whatever name they are called) when they are due
and final grades by
their due date---which is always the Tuesday
at 4:00 pm after finals week or, for
summer semesters,
the Monday at 4:00 pm
after the last Friday of the semester.
There are NO MIDTERM GRADES for
summer semesters it seems.
This is true for any course.
Students should make any queries about their
final grades or requests for
reweighting of items before
the instructor submits
final grades.
Yours truly posts grade records (which includes current
letter grades)
under anonymous aliases.
I avoid names that could be actual person names and those
with problematic connotations such as
Cancer
and Virgo.
The anonymous alias should be known to you alone
and it should NOT be guessable as you or anyone else
and NOT be objectionable in an academic context.
Also it CANNOT be an astronomical object
since all the common ones are already all used.
The posting order will be in the extended alphabetic ordering (as above)
which is the ordering used by Unix
for its files in its directories.
15-second wait at least.
But if it is something just specified in the
Course Website / Extended Syllabus
(i.e., on this site), I'm likely to reply just with the
URL
to the relevant item above.
On with the show:
Introductory Astronomy Lectures (IAL)---or
Today's Group Activity
(if this is an
in-person instruction course)
and then on with the show.
Form groups of 2 or 3---NOT more---and tackle
Homework -1 for in-person instruction
(or
Homework -1 for remote instruction)
problems 1 to the end on the
Course Website / Extended Syllabus.
Groups of 1 for
remote instruction course,
of course.
Discuss each problem and come to a group answer.
Let's work for 5 or so minutes.
The winners get chocolates.
See
Solution -1 for in-person instruction
(or
Solution -1 for remote instruction).
Very reassuring I think.
Also my favorite Einstein quote:
EOF
googolplex
=10 googol
=1010100.
No one can memorize
jillions
of isolated facts---you learn the
narratives in which those facts
turn up and the narratives cue you for the facts.
This is like almost all non-trivial learning.
Note for the in-person instruction course
that there are two Bigelow buildings:
EOF
The astronomy laboratory course
Ast 105
is a separate course from
Ast 103
and Ast 104.
One or the other of
Ast 103
and Ast 104
or the equivalent is a pre/corequisite for
Ast 105.
Let's just take a quick look at
IALs
now.
IAL
was written and is updated by the instructor.
IAL
can never be as perfected as published books, but
it amounts to the same thing---and it's free.
If you CANNOT find a link to
IALs,
google
"unlv jeffery ial".
It may NOT be the first found item.
There are numerous supplementary sources: e.g.,
Wikipedia (generally very good on
astronomy, but
never a final source),
NASA sites (numerous),
UNLV libraries (probably quasi-infinite astronomy books),
and so on endlessly.
The images are a more complicated story:
This stream covers the basics of astronomy (which includes, among other things,
the celestial sphere,
the seasons,
constellations,
phases of the Moon,
and the history of astronomy),
all of physics (just kidding),
the Solar System,
exoplanets,
planetary systems
(see figure below for example),
stars,
black holes,
galaxies,
the cosmic web
(AKA the
large-scale structure of the universe),
and
cosmology.
Everything up to and including
planetary systems and
exoplanets
from the AA list above, plus a little more.
Everything from the AA list above, except for the
Solar System,
exoplanets, and
planetary systems---except we
do a little bit of these three topics anyway.
There is a math component---but it's elementary.
The math component
is there because astronomy
is very mathematical
(though this course isn't), and so getting some understanding of
the mathematical
aspect of astronomy is essential.
It is also one of the gaols of this course to develop student
math skills a bit.
But when I'm lecturing, we mostly just look at:
The two streams again:
Summer Semester Qualification 1:
The break will only be 5 minutes or so.
We have little enough time in
summer semesters.
Everyone will need that break---then we resume with renewed vigor and
vitality.
Summer Semester Qualification 3:
Summer Semester Qualification 4:
You can report all
RHSTs
done later, but
by Tuesday 4 pm after finals week at the very latest
(unless extenuating circumstances exist).
Do NOT wait for the last minute.
The earlier you report all the
RHSTs
you have done the better.
__________________________________________________________________________
Table: Evaluations Items
__________________________________________________________________________
Item Percentage Drops Comment
of grade
__________________________________________________________________________
RHSTs 10 % no drops
group activities 10 % 7 drops The group activity item will
be dropped at student request.
2 in-class exams 40 % no drops
comprehensive final 40 % no drops
extra credit 0 % There is NO extra credit
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
Table: Evaluations Items
__________________________________________________________________________
Item Percentage Drops Comment
of grade
__________________________________________________________________________
RHSTs 10 % no drops
2 in-class exams 40 % no drops
comprehensive final 50 % no drops
extra credit 0 % There is NO extra credit
__________________________________________________________________________
In any course, just showing for class keeps the
student
at least partially up to date just in itself.
However, yours truly may use the 5-point scale (A,B,C,D,F) if the
12-point scale seems unfair which can happen when the class becomes small
and some of the 12-point categories become unpopulated.
The expensive prestige colleges have given up in the war on
grade inflation.
They give A's to everyone---well
something like 50 % of everyone
(see Rampell, C. 2014aug11, Washington Post, "A's for everyone").
But we're NOT Harvard:
see the figure below
(local link /
general link: harvard_yard.html).
However, there do NOT have to be any D's or F's necessarily.
But they can happen.
As mentioned above, the absolute DEADLINE for the
reading-homework-self-testings
is when final grades are due.
Remember that after an instructor has submitted
final grades,
any adjustments (except for purely
clerical errors) are NOT easy.
Grade postings under anonymous aliases are allowed by
FERPA
and UNLV policy.
See Academic Semester Memos:
Faculty Policies.
As anonymous aliases,
yours truly assigns roughly at random
the names of astronomical objects:
Solar System names,
constellation names from the
list of constellations
(which is defined by the
International Astronomical Union (IAU)),
traditional star names
for named stars,
and galaxy,
galaxy cluster,
and
galaxy supercluster names.
Yours truly usually informs a student of what their
anonymous alias is
on their first report of
reading-homework-self-testings.
The anonymous alias is NOT used as an identifier
when handing things in or emailing.
The anonymous alias is just for checking your grade record online.
If you send me a request for your current grade record or
letter grade,
I will usually simply tell/remind you of your
anonymous alias
and point to the appropriate grade directory from the list below
(local link /
general link: ast_grade_records.html).
Acceptable examples:
Kraken@Cthulhu,
Iset17,
@Doberman.Pinscher.
The anonymous aliases must be 15 characters or less
and can consist of characters from an extended alphabet:
0123456789@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
where use "_" rather than a blank.
You can, of course, email me questions about anything at anytime.
Group Activities:
:
Viaje al centro de la Tierra (1864).