This page collects the teaching materials that I’ve designed over more than a decade of teaching in higher education.  I am posting them here in the hopes that you will use them for your own education, or for someone else’s.

If you are a teacher, please feel free to use any and all of these resources in your own classes.  Much of this material can be adapted for a wide variety of grade levels. 

If you distribute any of the materials I’ve written, I only request that you please leave my name on them as the author (which is already at the bottom of each page of the PDFs so nothing needs to be changed).

If you have questions on how to adapt an activity to a certain grade level or have questions on how to implement or complete any activity, please contact me!

Activities

0. Introduction
1. Gravity
2. Orbits
3. Distance and Size
4. Parallax
5. The Daytime Sky
6. The Nighttime Sky
7. The Sky Through the Year
8. Moon Phases and Eclipses
9. Atoms and Spectra
10. Color, Temperature, and Size
11. Life and Death of Stars
12. Planet Hunting
13. Scale and Expansion of the Universe
14. Relativity

Homework and Pre-Labs

1. Forces and Newton’s Laws
2. Scientific Models
3. Moon Observations
4. Sky Watching HW: Orion
5. Sky Watching HW: Summer Triangle
6. Virtual Planetarium
7. Light
8. Gas Laws
9. Doppler Effect

Pre-Lab:

Pre-Lab: Forces and Newton’s Laws

Prerequisites:

Newton’s Laws at the elementary level discussed in the Pre-Lab video

Activity:

1 Gravity.pdf

Concepts Covered:

What are “up” and “down”?

Galileo’s theory of falling bodies

Air resistance and its effects on falling objects

Terminal velocity

Newton’s Law of Gravitation

Newton’s Third Law

Materials:

This Activity uses videos and simulations only, so a computer with Internet connection is the only thing required.

Gravity is a very difficult thing to study experimentally in a lab, so simulation is often my tool of choice for studying gravity.

Math Required:

This Activity (re-)introduces the student to direct and inverse proportions, which will be the most commonly used mathematical tool in this course.

Homework to Assign:

Students are instructed to download Stellarium for their computer and Star Walk 2 for their mobile devices, as we’ll be using them later this semester.

Stellarium is free and open source.

Star Walk 2 is a free app (with ads) and is available for both iOS and Android. I recommend spending a few dollars to remove the ads and support developers of educational science apps. Other add-ons, such as deep space objects, can be added later at the student’s discretion, but we won’t be using them in this course.

As soon as they get the Star Walk app they can start the first stargazing assignment.  Depending on the semester, I either assign the Orion assignment (if winter or spring semester) or the Summer Triangle assignment (if summer or fall semester).

Comments:

The first two Activities work together and ideally should be done back-to-back.

Pre-Lab:

Scientific Models

Although it’s not fully relevant to this Activity, I like to assign the Scientific Models pre-Lab early on because it is fundamental in any science course to understand what science is.  However, this pre-Lab can be assigned at any time during the course.

Prerequisites:

Newton’s First and Second Laws (Activity 1 Pre-Lab)

The definition of “down” (Activity 1)

Activity:

2 Orbits.pdf

Concepts Covered:

The relationship between falling and orbiting (Newton’s Cannon thought experiment)

Circular and elliptical orbits

What is weightlessness? Is there gravity in space?

The last part of this Activity involves riding an elevator while standing on a bathroom scale (or watching me do so on YouTube) and uses that to address a major misconception about why astronauts are weightless on the space station and whether there is gravity in space or not.

Materials:

A computer with Internet connection is needed for videos and simulations.

Elevator and analog bathroom scale. If you don’t have access to these, you can watch videos of me doing it on YouTube (URLs included within the Activity pdf).

Math Required:

None

Homework to Assign:

Start Moon Observations

A primary objective with moon observations is, like the Star Watching homework, to get the students to pay more attention to the sky. Another objective is to encourage them to look for patterns and cycles in nature.

This should be assigned about 5 weeks before the Moon Phases activity. That gives them at least a month’s worth of data. They will bring that data to the Moon Phases activity and analyze it.

The assignment includes some instructions as well as space to record the data. The instructions provide hints on how to find the Moon at different times of day. Many students are unaware that the Moon is up during the day about half the time.

Comments:

The first two Activities work together and ideally should be done back-to-back.

Pre-Lab:

None

Prerequisites:

None

Activity:

3 Distance and Size.pdf

Concepts Covered:

Apparent (angular) size vs Actual size

Estimating angular size using your hand

Finding the size of or the distance to an object if either size or distance is known

Light years

Relative scale of the Earth, Moon, and Sun in size and distances

Relative scale of the planets in our Solar System both in sizes and distances

Materials:

Dime

Measuring tape

Roll of paper (like cash register paper) or a piece of paper that is at least 5 feet long (in a pinch even a roll of toilet paper will do)

Scientific calculator or computer

Math Required:

Converting between radians, degrees, arcminutes, and arcseconds

Reciprocals

Trigonometry, in particular the tangent function (and its reciprocal, which is called the cotangent).

Comments:

This Activity is crucial because it establishes scale. For the remainder of the course I will frequently address the issue of scale to reinforce the idea. Even if the trigonometry part of the Activity is skipped, apparent size and scale can and should still be covered. In that sense, this Activity should be considered a prerequisite for everything that follows.

If one wishes to skip trigonometry but still discuss the relationship between distance and size, a simpler method can be taught that uses the small-angle approximation. This approximation works really great for astronomy where things are very far away, but not good at all if you’re using it to estimate the size of something across the room as we do in this activity. If you’re interested in the small-angle approach, contact me for more info on that.

Students are typically very surprised by the relative size and scale of objects in our Solar System, including the Earth, Moon, and Sun, and that’s because most images that we see of these objects are not to scale. This Activity addresses the reasons behind these unrealistic depictions and also sets the appropriate scale in the mind of the student.

Pre-Lab:

None

Prerequisites:

Optionally: the cotangent method from Activity 3.  If you skipped the cotangent method in Activity 3, you can skip the relevant parts in this activity as well (there are just a few).

Activity:

4 Parallax.pdf

Concepts Covered:

What is parallax?  The concept of parallax and our everyday experiences of it

Parallax angles and parsecs

Estimating distance to a star using parallax

Finding both distance to an object and its size when you know neither to begin with

Distances to other stars

Sizes of other stars

Scale of the Milky Way galaxy

Materials:

Just a ruler and a (non-scientific) calculator

Math Required:

This activity contains some basic geometry: angles, intersecting lines, triangles, and congruent angles.

There are also a few unit conversions in the last Part, but all of them are set up for the student and the student just needs to fill in some blanks and enter the results into a calculator.

Homework to Assign:

Depending on the semester, I either assign the Orion Star Watching assignment (if winter or spring semester) or the Summer Triangle Star Watching assignment (if summer or fall semester).

The objective of these Star Watching assignments is to teach them how to find some easily recognizable asterisms in the sky. I require the use of the Star Walk 2 phone app (available free) so that they can take screenshots to turn in as evidence that they’ve done the assignment.

Comments:

Parts 2 and 3 of this Activity borrow heavily from Lecture Tutorials for Introductory Astronomy by Prather, et al, including figures and some text.

If you like those parts of this Activity, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Lecture Tutorials in Physics for many more hands-on astronomy lessons. You can find it on Amazon here.

Pre-Lab:

None

Prerequisites:

None

Activity:

5 Daytime Sky.pdf

Concepts Covered:

Direction of Earth’s spin

Why do we have time zones?  Time zones vs Universal Time

Horizons and the zenith

Path of the sun through the sky as seen from the equator, on the north pole, and at mid-latitude

Relationship between maximum height of the sun and observer’s latitude on Earth

Materials:

Globe

Something to represent a person standing on the globe.  It will need to have an apparent top, bottom, and face.  I use a LEGO Minifig

Light bulb or something to represent the Sun (a computer screen works too)

Index card or piece of paper folded twice

Math Required:

None

Homework to Assign:

None

Comments:

This Activity is the beginning of a new unit that covers the behavior of objects in our sky.  The sky unit includes Activities 5 through 8. 

Motions of objects in the sky is the component of astronomy that students can perhaps best relate to their daily lives.  We all experience seasons, constellations, moon phases, etc.  My intention is that this unit will help connect astronomy to something they will experience long after the course has ended.

This Activity starts with the most obvious sky object: the Sun.  The Sun’s motion through the sky is modeled for observers at different latitudes on Earth.

As the beginning of the sky unit, this Activity introduces something very important: the idea of a “sky diagram”, which is a flattened 2D drawing of the sky as seen by an observer standing on the Earth.  These diagrams will be seen again in Activities 6 and 7.

A lot of what goes on in this unit is connecting a 3D model of what is happening in space to what we see in the 2D (hemispherical) sky.  In a sense, connecting a 3D model of space to observations in our sky is the root of astronomy!

This unit borrows some key curricular ideas (such as sky diagrams) from a course that I taught at the University of Texas at Austin from 2011 to 2015 as part of the UTeach program.  I can’t say enough good things about UTeach and their mission; please check out their website for more info about UTeach.

Pre-Lab:

None

Prerequisites:

This Activity relies heavily on the “sky diagrams” that were introduced in Activity 5.

The concept of scale (from Activity 3) continues to be an important topic, including a brief mention of the scale of other stars (from Activity 4).

Activity:

6 Nighttime Sky.pdf

Concepts Covered:

What is the position and motion of the North Star for an observer at different latitudes?

What is the position and motion of stars besides the North Star over the course of 24 hours, and how do those motions relate to the North Star?

Navigation using stars in the northern and southern hemispheres

Definition of “rising” and “setting”

Stars that rise and set, stars that never rise, and stars that never set

Identifying latitude based on a time lapse photograph of the motions of stars in the sky

Materials:

Globe

Something to represent a person standing on the globe.  It will need to have an apparent top, bottom, and face.  I use a LEGO Minifig

Light bulb or something to represent the Sun (a computer screen works too)

Index card or piece of paper folded twice

Math Required:

None, aside from a quick application of percentages

Homework to Assign:

Sky Watching HW 2

Comments:

This is the second lesson in the sky unit.

In the previous Activity, the in-class model consisted of the Sun, a spinning Earth (no tilt), and a person standing on the Earth at different latitudes.  In this Activity, we keep all of those elements and add one more: the North Star.

This Activity relies heavily on the “sky diagrams” that were used in the previous Activity, as well as introduces a new type of diagram, the “space diagram”.

Like the previous Activity, this Activity borrows some key curricular ideas from a course that I taught at the University of Texas at Austin from 2011 to 2015 as part of the UTeach program.

Prerequisites:

Daytime Sky (Activity 5)

Nighttime Sky (Activity 6)

Activity:

7 Sky Through the Year.pdf

Constellations to print (from Kinesthetic Astronomy by Morrow & Zawaski, Space Science Institute, University of Colorado at Boulder)

Concepts Covered:

Constellations in the night sky and how and why they change over the course of a year

Zodiac constellations and the ecliptic plane

Rising and setting of constellations, planets, and the Moon

The origin of your Zodiacal sun sign and what your sign would be using an accurate modern picture of the night sky

Including the tilt of the Earth’s spin axis in our model of the Sun-Earth system

Length of day and height of Sun at different latitudes during different times of the year

Solstices and equinoxes

Seasons on Uranus (optional)

Materials:

Paper for drawing or printing constellations with tape to attach them to the wall

Light bulb or something to represent the Sun (a computer screen works too)

Polystyrene (AKA Styrofoam) ball

Globe

Something to represent a person standing on the globe.  It will need to have an apparent top, bottom, and face.  I use a LEGO Minifig

Colored markers

Math Required:

None

Homework to Assign:

None

Comments:

This Activity builds on the previous two and comprises the third part in the unit on the sky.

Two things will be added to our model of the Earth and Sun in this Activity: the orbit of the Earth around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth’s spin axis.

The students will learn the origin of their Zodiacal sun sign and this is the one brief mention of astrology in the entirety of this course.  The students are also presented with an accurate picture of the constellations (rather than the 3000-year old picture used in astrology, which also leaves out a thirteenth constellation because the Babylonians associated mystical importance to the number 12) and what their Zodiacal sun sign really is.  Some students might feel confronted by this information if they have deep-seated beliefs about the importance of their astrological sign.  This is all a very brief part of the Activity.

The majority of the Activity focuses on the changing sky over the course of the year and the seasons.  Many students may have heard that the tilt of the Earth causes the seasons, but this Activity endeavors to show the students why the tilt of the Earth causes the seasons by having them model  the changing height of the Sun and length of the day.  One aspect relevant to seasons that is omitted is the angle of the sunlight.

The Activity concludes with an optional but fun investigation of the seasons on Uranus in which the students apply what they just learned in a new and unusual case (Uranus has a roughly 90 degree tilt, i.e. it spins “on its side”, and therefore its seasons are extreme and much different than what we are familiar with on Earth).

Prerequisites:

Daytime Sky (Activity 5)

Nighttime Sky (Activity 6)

Moon observations (HW that’s due)

Activity:

8 Moon Phases & Eclipses.pdf

Concepts Covered:

Using prior observations of the lunar phases to estimate the length of time between phases and what the phase will be in the near future

Modeling the cause of the Moon’s phases and dispelling two common misconceptions about it

Dark side of the Moon vs far side of the Moon

Connecting the position of the Moon to its phase

Relationship between the Moon’s motion and whether it is waxing or waning

Meaning of quarter moon and names of other phases

Interpreting a Moon Phase calendar

Using the Moon Phase and the Moon’s position in the sky to estimate the time of day

Knowing when the Moon will rise and set based on its phase (and addressing the common misconception that the Moon is out only at night)

Cause of the lunar and solar eclipses (terminology: ecliptic plane, lunar nodes)

Partial and total eclipses (terminology: umbra, penumbra)

What if the Moon’s orbit weren’t tilted with respect to the ecliptic plane?

Materials:

Light bulb to represent the Sun (must be a light bulb this time)

Small (similar in size to the light bulb) polystyrene (AKA Styrofoam) ball on a wooden dowel (or long pencil)

White ping pong ball painted half black

Highlighters of multiple colors

Math Required:

None

Homework to Assign:

Virtual Planetarium

This homework, an introduction to Stellarium, simulates the night sky in a much more realistic way than we’ve been doing by hand and helps solidify a lot of the concepts we’ve covered in this sky unit, including motions of the stars, constellations at different times of the year, and eclipses. The homework also introduces them to the important Messier catalog of sky objects, including nebulae, galaxies, and globular clusters. Lastly, the homework introduces the concept of a transit. I give students twice as long (i.e., two weeks) to do this homework as usual.

Comments:

This Activity concludes the unit on the sky by adding the Moon to our Sun-Earth model. It relies on the space and sky diagrams that we’ve done prior in this unit.

This Activity covers a lot of ground and requires good focus on the part of the students. Historically, I’ve found that moon phases is one of the most difficult concepts to grasp in this course.

As with seasons in the previous Activity, students may have heard of the cause of the Moon’s phases but this Activity endeavors to show them why the Moon phases happen by having them model and experience the Moon phases first-hand in two different ways: using a light bulb and ball model, and using a simple model with a half black / half white ball.

Students will learn how to connect phases to the Moon’s position — both in space and in the sky — relative to the Sun. They will also use this information to discover what time the Moon rises and sets based on its phase. Along the way this addresses the common misconception that the Moon is only up at night.

The Activity concludes with a treatment of eclipses that is brief but that introduces the core concepts of the Moon’s orbital tilt, ecliptic plane, lunar nodes, and solar and lunar eclipses; and, connects these concepts to the Moon phases just discussed.

Pre-Lab:

Light

This pre-Lab introduces the students to three models of light (wave, particle, and ray). A recommended prerequisite for this pre-Lab is the Scientific Models pre-Lab.

After being introduced to electromagnetic waves, students are given practice in identifying wavelength and frequency. From there they are introduced to the speed of light, the electromagnetic spectrum, light energy, and colors.

This pre-Lab is absolutely crucial to the remainder of the course, since the remainder of the course will involve using properties of light to determine the nature of astronomical objects.

Prerequisites:

The Light pre-Lab (for which the Scientific Models pre-Lab is also a recommended prerequisite)

Activity:

9 Atoms and Spectra.pdf

Concepts Covered:

From Light pre-Lab:

Wave, particle, and ray models of light

Wavelength and frequency

Electromagnetic spectrum

Speed of light

Light energy

Colors of visible light (ROYGBV)

From Activity:

Continuous spectrum, emission spectrum, and absorption spectrum

Using a spectroscope

What is white light?

Electron energy levels in an atom

Conservation of energy

Electron transitions and emission and absorption of light energy

Lyman, Balmer, and Paschen series

Predicting spectral lines of Balmer series

Identifying a gas based on its spectral lines

Transparent and opaque

Identifying elements in the Sun’s atmosphere using its absorption spectrum

Materials:

Ruler

Incandescent white light bulb

Spectroscope or diffraction grating (instructions for making your own spectroscope from a CD/DVD and a cereal box)

Gas lamps containing various gases (optional)

Math Required:

Proportional reasoning

Homework to Assign:

None

Comments:

This Activity marks the beginning of a new unit, a unit that addresses the question, “How do we know what we know about things that are so far away?”  If they are too far away for us to visit, how can we know anything about them like their temperature and composition?

Prerequisites:

Continuous spectrum (Activity 9)

Colors, light energy, electromagnetic spectrum (Light pre-Lab)

Activity:

10 Color Temp Size.pdf

Concepts Covered:

Blackbody spectrum

Spectral curve

Wien’s Law

Luminosity

H-R diagrams

Materials:

None, just an Internet connection to access simulators

Math Required:

Proportional reasoning

Graph reading

Comments:

Part 1 of this Activity introduces students to spectral curves and uses the PhET simulator for the blackbody spectrum. They use the simulator to discover Wien’s Law.

In Part 2 they use Wien’s Law to estimate temperatures of objects like stars, and estimate the peak wavelength of objects like their own bodies.

In Part 3 they learn the relationship between luminosity, temperature, and size using a stovetop analogy. They then learn to interpret H-R diagrams.

Parts 2 and 3 of this Activity borrow heavily from Lecture Tutorials for Introductory Astronomy by Prather, et al, including figures and some text.

If you like those parts of this Activity, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Lecture Tutorials in Physics for many more hands-on astronomy lessons. You can find it on Amazon here.

Pre-Lab:

Gas Laws

This pre-Lab uses a gas-in-a-box simulator from PhET to teach the student about some basic gas principles that will be crucial for understanding stars. Those are:

Definition of temperature (called “Principle 1”)

Boyle’s Law (called “Principle 2”)

1st Law of Thermodynamics applied to gases (called “Principle 3”)

Prerequisites:

Basic acquaintance with chemical elements

Activity:

11 Life and Death of Stars.pdf

Concepts Covered:

From Gas Laws pre-Lab:

Definition of temperature

Boyle’s Law

1st Law of Thermodynamics applied to gases

From Activity:

Nuclear fusion and the Coulomb barrier

Electric force (opposites attract and likes repel)

Coulomb’s Law

Combustion vs fusion

Birth of a star

Radiation pressure

Hydrostatic equilibrium

Stellar nurseries, like the Orion Nebula

Lifespan of a star

Main sequence

Red giant phase

Stellar collapse

Supernova explosions

Elemental abundances and “We are made of star stuff”

Materials:

A basketball and a tennis ball

Internet connection for simulators

Math Required:

Proportional reasoning

Comments:

This is a long Activity that covers a lot of territory. It could easily be split up into two Activities. If you did so, I’d suggest doing the pre-Lab plus Parts 1, 2, and 3 as one Activity, and Parts 4, 5, and 6 as a second Activity.

Pre-Lab:

Doppler Effect

This pre-Lab first introduces students to two-dimensional wave patterns, then uses an online simulator to investigate and understand the Doppler Effect for sound.

Later, in Activity 12 itself, they’ll then be introduced to the Doppler Effect for light.

The Doppler Effect will be crucial for understanding the astronomical observations in Activities 12 and 13.

Lastly, since a simulation provides a nice illustration, and just for fun, this pre-Lab introduces students to the sonic boom.

Prerequisites:

Waves in one-dimension, wavelength, frequency (from Light pre-Lab)

Electromagnetic spectrum, colors (from Light pre-Lab)

Newton’s Third Law (Activity 1)

Recommended: Eclipses (Activity 8) and/or Transits (Virtual Planetarium HW)

Activity:

12 Planet Hunting.pdf

Concepts Covered:

From the pre-Lab:

Wave patterns in two dimensions

Doppler Effect for sound

Sonic Boom

From the Activity:

Exoplanets

Doppler Effect for light

Redshift and blueshift

Effects of satellites on the motion of bodies they orbit

Radial velocity method for finding exoplanets

Transits

Transit method for finding exoplanets

Materials:

This Activity uses animations and simulations only, so a computer with Internet connection is the only thing required.

Math Required:

Graph reading

Comments:

This Activity and the next, although on two completely different topics, go together because they both use the Doppler Effect. Since the Doppler Effect for light is taught in this Activity, it is effectively a prerequisite for the next Activity.

Prerequisites:

Redshift and blueshift (Activity 12)

Recommended: “road trip analogy” for the scale of the solar system (Activity 0)

Activity:

13 Scale and Expansion of the Universe.pdf

Concepts Covered:

Scales: Interstellar, Galactic, Extragalactic

Galaxy Clusters and Superclusters: Local Group, Virgo Supercluster, Laniakea Supercluster

Cosmic Web

Hubble’s Law

Expanding universe

Materials:

Measuring tape and 4 objects to represent galaxies

Math Required:

Proportional reasoning

Velocity = distance / time

Comments:

So far in this course the largest scale we’ve talked about is the Milky Way. This Activity begins with a discussion of scale, starting at the scale of our solar system and gradually zooming out. This zoom-out covers interstellar distances, size of the Milky Way, intergalactic distances in the Local Group, size of the Virgo and Laniakea superclusters, and beyond to the Cosmic Web.

An option I sometimes use is to take the scale part of this Activity and turn it into a homework that is due on the start date of the Activity.

Once scale has been established, the Activity moves on to modeling an expanding universe. The students first understand Hubble’s Law: what Hubble’s observations were and how they are represented by Hubble’s Law. The students then create a simple one-dimensional model of an expanding universe and, with some basic calculations, see that it reproduces Hubble’s observations.

The Activity ends with some discussion about what it means to have an expanding universe plus an FAQ addressing some of the most common questions I get about the Big Bang model (Was the Big Bang an explosion? What caused / came before the Big Bang? Where is the center of the univers. ? Does the universe have an edge? Does it go on forever?)

Prerequisites:

None

Activity:

14 Relativity.pdf

Concepts Covered:

Maxwell’s prediction of the speed of light

Galilean relativity

Reference frames

Addition of velocities (nonrelativistic)

Einstein’s postulate about the constancy of the speed of light

Light clocks

Time dilation

Length contraction

Historical measurement of time dilation

Twins thought experiment

E=mc²

Lorentz factor

Materials:

Internet connection for an online applet

Math Required:

Computing fractions, squares, square roots, and reciprocals

Proportional reasoning from an equation (minor usage)

Infinity (minor usage)

Comments:

This Activity follows the historical sequence of events leading up to Einstein’s relativity, first starting with Galilean relativity and Maxwell’s calculation of the speed of light.

It then uses an online Light Clock applet (from the University of Virginia) to illustrate the idea of time dilation.

E=mc² is also introduced and the students are led through some very basic calculations and conclusions.  The goal is to understand some of the implications and therefore the importance of the equation and the reason for its fame.

The Activity concludes with some exposition about Einstein’s miracle year, his impact on our understanding of the universe, his further development of relativity, and in general aims to justify why his likeness and name have become cultural icons that are emblematic of genius.