Seminars for Teachers, Spring 2010
The
Solar System, the
Earth,
and Our
Future
- Date: Friday, Feb. 26, 2010
- Time: 9:00am-3:00pm
- Room: 0135 Taliaferro Hall
- Prof: Doug Hamilton
Course Description
This is a one-day course broken up into a 3-hour morning session and a
2-hour afternoon session. The morning session will put the Earth in
its place in space and time by summarizing the known extent of the
Solar System and discussing its origin and ultimate fate. The
afternoon session will focus on the atmospheres of the Earth-like
planets, covering the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus and the slow
but insidious loss of Mars' atmosphere to space. The course concludes
with a discussion of the facts and fears behind global warming here on
Earth. The course content will be woven around a set of interactive
online tools that I have designed for teaching astronomy: The Astronomy Workshop. These tools are
already available to the public, and one of my goals will be to
familiarize teachers with these resources, giving them up-to-date
knowledge for use in their own classroom demonstrations and/or
assignments. Ideally, teachers will have access to internet-enabled
machines during the sessions so that they can get immediate hands-on
experience. Each of the five 1-hour modules will be informal enough
to encourage questions at any time, with specific 10-minute segments
allocated to questions, discussion, and/or hands-on experimentation.
Morning Topics:
- Surveying the Solar System. (9am-10am)
A brief history of the highlights of planetary exploration
followed by a discussion of the Solar System's surprising
regularities. These
regularities provide important clues as to how our Solar System
came to be.
Featured WebTool:
Solar System Visualizer
an animation of the planets, satellites, and small bodies of the
Solar System
- Formation of the Solar System. (10am-11am)
A detail discussion of the current understanding of how our
Solar System formed.
Heavily cratered worlds are clues to a violent past. The rocky
planets
were forged in giant collisions. How did these stupendous
events shape the Earth?
Featured WebTool:
Solar System Collisions,
a calculator that determines the effects of an impactor of given
size on Earth.
- Fate of the Solar System (11am-12am)
A discussion of the physics inside the Sun. How does the Sun
work?
What fuels it? And what happens when the Sun runs out of fuel?
Featured WebTool:
The Sun's Life,
an animation of the detailed changes that our Sun will undergo in
the future.
Afternoon Topics:
- Climate and Climate Change on Earth, Venus, and Mars (1pm-2pm)
A study in contrasts. In the distant past, Earth and its
neighboring planets were similar, but while Earth remained
temperate, Mars became too cold for life while Venus became too
hot. What processes led to this divergence and what lessons can
we learn
from this?
- Global Warming on Earth: How Serious? What can you do? (2pm -
3pm)
A summary of the problem: Separating fact from fiction. The
skeptic, the true
believer, and the cautious middle road. Electricity, gasoline,
and renewable
energy.
