LAB ACTIVITIES:

There are many different ways to actively involve students in the learning process. Experiments - demonstrational and frontal - are considered to be the most effective methods in science teaching. The number and complexity of lab experiments in an astrophysics course may vary depending on the level of students' preparedness and on teachers' preferences.

Unfortunately, there are no labs specifically developed for high school astrophysics. One way of overcoming this obstacle is to modify college-level experiments and adjust them for high school students. Another way is to adopt experimental activities from the existing astronomy course.

The following is the list of possible experimental and observational assignments taken from "Conceptual Astronomy: A Journey of Ideas" by Michael Zeilik (1), "Project Star: The Universe in Your Hands" by Harold Coyle (2), and "The Practical Astronomer" by Brian Jones (3). Teachers can choose from the list to allow all students of the class to participate in the same experiment in each unit or to allow each group to conduct different experiments.

• Unit 1 "History of Exploring the Universe":
  • "Modeling the phases of the Moon," Act. 7.2, pp. 94-105, (2)
  • "Making a scale model of the solar system," Act. 8.2, pp. 111-118, (2)
  • "Building and using an astronomical telescope," Act. 6.4, pp. 81-89, (2)
  • "Building a celestial sphere and modeling the Sun's apparent motion," Act. 3.1 and 3.2, pp. 23-40, (2)
  • "Plotting the orbits of Mercury & Venus," Act. 8.1, pp. 107-110, (2)
  • "Observing the Sun's motion," Act.1, p.19, (1)
  • "Learning about the retrograde motion of Mars," Act.2, p. 42, (1)
  • "The orbit of Halley's Comet", Act.8, p. 172, (1)
  • "Observing the terrestrial planets", pp. 104-105, (3)
  • "Observing the gas giants," pp. 108-109, (3)
• Unit 2 " Electromagnetic radiation on trial":
  • "Reflection and refraction of visible light"
  • "Generating and receiving radio signals"
  • "Properties of infrared radiation"
  • "Detecting and analyzing ultraviolet information"
  • "Geiger counters and invisible gamma rays"
• Unit 3 " Stellar astrophysics":
  • "Classifying stars," Act.11, p. 247-248, (1)
  • "Using a spectroscope," Act. 9, p. 197-198, (1)
  • "Observing variable stars," pp. 118-119, (3)
  • "Investigating the colors of objects," Act. 11.2, pp. 153-159, (2)
  • "What do filters do?," Act.11.3, pp.160-165, (2)
  • "Graphing color and temperature," Act. 12.1, pp. 169-172, (2)
  • "Measuring colors with spectrometer," Act. 12.2, pp. 173-176, (2)
• Unit 4 "Astrophysics' role in solving the mystery of the universe":
  • "What is the Sun made of," Act.12.3, pp. 177-179, (2)
  • "Determining galaxy sizes and distances," Act. 14.1, pp. 191-196, (2)
  • "The Universe on the rubber band," Act. 14.2, pp. 197-198, (2)
  • "Hubble's law," Act. 16, pp. 369-370, (1)
  • "Observing artificial satellites," pp. 120-121, (3)
  • "Locating the Solar system in the Milky Way galaxy," Act. 180-190, (2)

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