Astronomy 110 Syllabus Dr. Jay Maron

Schedule

Lecture:  Monday 12:00 (noon), 701 Fiterman Hall.
Lab:      Thursday 12:00 (noon), N569.

February 15 Monday:   President's day, No class. (No class Tuesday either, as far as I can tell)
February 25 Thursday: Parallax, Stair climbing, Kinetic energy,
                      Hooke's law.
March     3 Thursday: Phases of Venus, Montreal, Gravity constant
March    10 Thursday: Batteries, Escape velocity, Orbital stability, Hohmann maneuver, Lunar lander
March    14 Monday:   Midterm
March    17 Thursday: Air drag, Frequency resolution, Aural resolution, overtones, Wave speed, Guitar tuning
March    24 Thursday: Aural resolution, Measurement error, Tensile strength, Loudspeakers, overtones, Wave speed, Guitar tuning
April    14 Thursday:  Wikipedia lab
April    21 Thursday:  Blackbody radiation
April    25 Monday:    Spring break. No class.
April    28 Thursday:  Spring break. No class.
May      16 Monday:    Last class.  Review
May      19 Thursday:  Optional lab: Musical instrument performance
May      23 Monday:    Final exam.
May      26 Thursday:  Due to popular demand, lab is happening! Special topics will be discussed.  Attendance is optional although most have stated that they will attend.

jasonmaron@gmail.com, 310-266-3257

Midterm

The midterm covers chapters 1-13 of Bennett.
Practice midterm

Final

The final covers chapters 14-24 of Bennett.

Practice final

Units: Distance Velocity Mass Density Light travel time Temperature Energy Power Pressure Energy/Mass

Solar system:    Scales of the universe    Gravity and orbits    Orbital stability    Planets and moons
Core heating    Magnetic fields    Atmospheres    Water    Terrain
Exoplanets    Light    Stars    Galaxies    Hubble's law    Telescopes

Lecture visuals

Astronomy
Units
Labs
Astrobiology
Problems
Earth climate
Rockets
Mars mission
Waves
Fine material on the web
Main index of lecture visuals

Office hours

Library, Monday at 3 and Thursday at 2.

Grades

Grades will be determined by a sum of exams, labs, homework, and class participation. You can choose the fraction from each category subject to the following limits.


             Minimum fraction   Maximum fraction

Exam 1               .1           .2
Exam 2               .1           .2
Exam 3 (final)       .1           .2
Lab                  .25          .4
Homework             .1           .4
Class participation  .1           .2
Total                .75         n/a

"Minimum fraction" is the minimum fraction of your grade that must come from this category, and "Maximum fraction" is the maximum fraction of your grade that may come from this category.

For homework, hand in as many as you like. It's better to do a small number of hard problems than a large number of easy ones. For a source of homework problems you can use Bennett, the lecture visuals, or any other source.

You can work in small groups and turn in one writeup for the group.

Grades will be tallied continuously during the term and so if you work hard it will be possible to lock in your desired grade before the end of the term. The tally will be posted on a website where each student will have their own password and will only be able to see their own grades.

Problems

You can work in small groups and turn in one writeup for the group.

Challenge questions #1
Challenge questions #2
Challenge questions #3
Astronomy projects

Projects

Construct timelines for the history of science using Wikipedia.

Contribute to a wikipedia article or textbook.

Design html lecture notes and figures. Find useful animations and figures from the web. This webpage shows how to use html to build figues.

Design a lab demonstration for the class.

Design an interesting homework or exam problem. There is a chance that your problem will appear on the actual exam.

Choose a specialty, research it, design a web page on it, and give a short presentation for the class.

Find useful Apps.

Find youtube videos and other useful content.

Give a scientific presentation to your friends and report on the results. Or, write a facebook post or tweet about science.

Find data for water quality for rivers, measured as either "Biological oxygen demand (BOD)" or "Chemical oxygen demand (COD)".

Find data for sewage treatment plants such as: Number of people supported.
Kilograms/year of potassium, phosphorus, and potassium extracted.
Water quality after treatment.

Find data for the water requirement to grow food for various conditions such as underground irrigation and greenhouses.

Write an astrology page.

Build a musical instrument.

Find novel biological organisms such as the mantis shrimp (sees 12 colors) and the bombardier beetle (uses explosives).

Topics for science articles

Unclaimed topics:
Add examples to the Wikipedia page "Tragedy of the Anticommons".
Iron fertilization of the oceans to sequester carbon (this could solve the climate problem in one blow)
The Multiverse
The Pan-STARRS telescope and asteroid finding.
The Paris Agreement
Patents that are holding back civilization.
Wikipedia has many timeline pages. Use an online graphics package to make them into figures.

Claimed topics:
Solar cells. Cell cost/meter², efficiency, auxiliary costs.
Wind turbines. Height, blade length, power for a 10 m/s wind, cost.
Bamboo farming. Woodvolume/hectare/year, watermass/woodmass, fertilizer requirement per kg of wood.
Water quality of the world's rivers.
The La Palma volcano. What studies exist regarding its future tsunami potential?
What is the state of America's disaster defense? What are the biggest inadequacies?
Sewage treatment: Costs, biomass, production, fertilizer production.
Greenhouses: Costs, water requirement, fertilizer requirement.
Supercapacitors, cost and energy/mass.
Flying cars. cost, loudness, engine power, propeller diameter.
Prefabricated houses. Mass, volume, materials cost, labor cost, transportation cost.
Deep ocean exploration
New technologies
Terraforming of Mars
Natural disasters
Drones. Cost, mass, power, energy, flight time, top speed.

Wikipedia

Contribute to the following Wikipedia textbooks:

General astronomy
Climate change
Physics study guide
Physics of tuning systems
Acoustics
Modern physics
Anatomy and psysiology of animals
High school biology
High school Earth science
Human psysiology
A-level physics
FHSST physics
General mechanics
IB physics
Waves

At present there is no textbook for astrobiology. A bonus point for the person that creates it.

Textbook

The textbook is The Essential Cosmic Perspective, by Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, and Voit.
Get the cheapest edition you can. The ebook is fine. You don't need "Mastering Astronomy."

Objectives

Units
Calculating formulas
Measurement
Using Wikipedia to obtain formulas and numbers
Magnitudes of astronomy
Orbits
Planets and moons
Stars, fusion, and fission
Blackbody radiation, human vision, photosynthesis, greenhouse effect
Resolution, diffraction, and telescopes
History of the universe, the Earth, evolution, and science
Earth climate
Waves, oscillators, and overtones
Civil engineering
Awareness of pop science
Wizardry with Wikipedia
Tackle hard problems

Homework due February 8

Units

Homework due February 22

Alcohol density

Density

Gold has a density of 19.3 g/cm³. What is the mass of a gold cube that is 3 cm on a side?

Gold costs 40 $/gram. What is the price of the gold cube?

Using Wikipedia, How much CO2 was released by the Pinatubo volcano and what was the volume of magma ejected?

What is the mass of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere and how many Pinatubos would it take to double the atmosphere's CO2?

Homework due February 29

Atmosphere

What is the mass of the Earth's atmosphere, what is the mass of the carbon dioxide it contains, and what is the mass of elemental carbon contained in the carbon dioxide?

Using Wikipedia, what is the height of the space station and how fast is it moving?

What is the formula for gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy?

What is the cost of electricity in Joules/$?

How much energy does it take to lift one kg vertically from the surface of the Earth to the height of the space station?

How much kinetic energy does 1 kg of matter have if it is moving at the speed of the space station?

How much does this much electricity energy cost?

Homework due March 7

The wave equation is:

Wavelength * Frequency  =  Wavespeed

The wavelength of visible light is 5.55e-7 meters. What is the frequency?

A person with 20/20 vision can see 1.5 mm letters at a distance of 1 meter.

For a computer screen 20 cm from your eyes, what is the minimum size of letters you can see?

If each letter is 7 pixels then how many pixels does a 10 cm screen have? (This is a "retinal" display)

A ten centimeter telescope is 20 times more powerful that a human with 20/20 vision. If giant letters are painted on the moon, what is the minimum size of letters that the telescope can see?

Homework due March 14

Bamboo

A violin A-string has a frequency of 440 Hertz and the speed of sound is 340 m/s. What is the wavelength of this wave?

Using Wikipedia, how much $/kg does it require to launch material into space? Find data for several rockets.

Using data from Wikipedia, how many kg of water does it take to grow one kg of rice? How many calories are in 1 kg of rice? Approximately how many calories you eat in one year and how many Joules is this? If you get the energy from rice then how many kg is a year's supply of rice, and how many kg of water does it take to produce it?

How many kg of water flow through the Mississippi per year, and how many people can it feed if it is used to grow rice?

Homework due March 21

Using data from Wikipedia, how far away is the Virgo cluster of galaxies and how fast is it moving away from us?

If we assume that it has beem moving away from at us at this speed since the big bang, how long ago were the Milky Way and the Virgo Cluster in the same place? (Use X = VT)

The intensity of sunlight at Earth's orbit is 1360 Watts/meter².
How much energy in Joules falls on the Earth each second?

Energy = Mass * Speedoflight²

How much mass does this energy correspond to?

Humans generate energy by reacting hydrocarbons with oxygen. Consider the reaction of octane, which has 8 carbons and 18 hydrogens.

C₈H₁₈  +  25 O₂  ->  9 H₂O  +  8 CO₂

M_octane  =  Mass of octane in the reaction
M_oxygen  =  Mass of oxygen in the reaction

What is M_oxygen/M_octane?

R  =  Radius of an asteroid
P  =  Probability per millenium of a hit from an asteroid at least as large as R

Using data from the web, what is P for R = .01, .1, 1, 10 km?

Homework due March 31

What would you estimate is the mass of a 16 inch diameter pizza with sausage, Canadian bacon, Parmesan cheese, olives, mushrooms, onions, and peppers? What is an estimate of the mass of each ingredient?

Using data from Wikipedia, find the energy released when hydrogen and oxygen combine to form 1 kg of water.

Kinetic energy = ½ Mass Velocity²

If a rocket nozzle converts this energy into kinetic energy of exhaust, how fast is the exhaust moving?

If a solar cell produces 1000 Watts, estimate how long it takes to produce enough energy to convert 1 ton of water to hydrogen and oxygen gas?

Homework due April 11

How are the Pan-STARRS and LSST telescopes different from conventional telescopes like Keck? What can they do that Keck can't?

A human with 20/20 vision can resolve letters 1.5 mm tall at a distance of 1 meter. If a letter is painted on the moon, what is the smallest letter that can be resolved?

Find a subject from the history of science and use Wikipedia to construct a timeline for it.

For a steel wire,

Force required to break the wire  =  F     (Newtons)
Cross-sectional area of the wire  =  A     (meters²)
Tensile strength of the wire      =  S  =  2⋅10^{8 Newtons/meter²}

If a person with a weight of 1000 Newtons (100 kg) hangs from this wire, what is the minimum cross-sectional area for the wire to not break? What is the diameter of this wire?

Homework due April 18

In the flying tank scene from the film "A Team", a tank fires a shell and recoils. By conservation of momentum,

Tank recoil speed  *  Tank mass  =  Shell speed  *  Shell mass

Without looking on the web, what would you estimate is the mass of a tank and shell, and what would you estimate is the mass of a shell?

Use Wikipedia to obtain typical values for the above quantities and use them to calculate the tank recoil speed.

If Randy Johnson throws a baseball in space, estimate without using the web the mass and speed of the baseball and the mass of Randy Johnson. Using the above formula, what is his recoil speed?

Without using the web, estimate: (show how you arrived at each estimation)
The number of students at the University of Wisconsin.
The number of bars on State Street (half of the bars are located here).
The amount of beer consumed per week in pints and kegs.
The number of 18-wheel trucks required to carry the kegs.

Without using the web, estimate the number of 20 dollar bills that a typical briefcase can carry. If the bills are replaced with gold, how many $ worth of gold is this? (Assume gold costs 35000 $/kg).

Your brain contains 10¹³ bytes of information. If this information is stored on micro SD cards, how many suitcases would it take to carry them?

Homework due May 2

Time                                 =  T            seconds
Solar cell efficiency                =  C   =  .25   dimensionless
Area of a solar cell                 =  A            meters²
Average solar intensity in Arizona   =  S_sol =   250 Watts/meter²    (Averaged over day and night)
Power generated by a solar cell      =  P   =  C A S_sol
Energy generated by a solar cell     =  E   =  P T   Joules
United States population             =  N   =    318 million
United States electricity per person =  P_cap =  1700 Watts
United states electrical power       =  P_USA = N P_cap = 4.5⋅10¹¹ Watts

What is "A", the area of solar cells required to provide America's electricity?

Homework due May 9

Using data from the web,

What is the price of gold in $/kg?
how much gold is mined per year?
What is the value of this gold in billions of dollars?

Without using the web, estimate the time it would take to hike from Manhattan to San Francisco, taking account for rest and sleep. Describe your methodology behind your estimate.

Using data from the web, estimate how many times per century that Manhattan can expect an earthquake of magnitude larger than 8. Describe how you arrived at the estimate.

Using Wikipedia, what is a typical value for the amount of MegaWatts produced by a 1 km² region of wind turbines? What is the power consumed by the United States? How many km² of wind turbines are required to supply this power?

Using Wikipedia, how much does it cost to desalinate 1 ton of seawater? If we assume that food is grown in greenhouses with a water footprint of .2 tons/kg of food, and if it takes 400 kg of food to feed 1 person for 1 year, what is the cost to desalinate the water for a year's supply of food?

For a bullet,

Lead volume              =  S_lead     (meters³)
Gunpowder volume         =  S_powder   (meters³)
Lead density             =  D_lead   =  11400 kg/meters³
Gunpowder density        =  D_powder =   1400 kg/meters³
Lead mass                =  M_lead   =  D_lead S_lead
Gunpowder mass           =  M_powder =  D_powder S_powder
Gunpowder energy density =  Q_powder =  5.2⋅10⁶ Joules/meter³
Gunpowder energy         =  E_powder =  Q_powder S_powder
Lead velocity            =  V
Lead kinetic energy      =  E_lead   =  ½ M_lead V²

If we assume that the lead and gunpowder volumes are equal and that all of the gunpowder energy goes into lead kinetic energy, what is the speed V of the lead?

What is the speed of light, what is the distance from the Sun to the Earth, and how many minutes does it take light to travel from the sun to the Earth?

Mass               =  M
Gravity constant   =  g  =  10 m/s²
Height             =  H
Gravity energy     =  E_g =  M g H
Human sprint speed =  V  =  10 m/s
Kinetic energy     =  E_k =  ½ M V²

In a pole vault, kinetic energy is converted to gravitational energy. We can approximate how high the vaulter goes by setting E_k=E_g. Given this assumption, what is H?

Optional (this one is difficult). Acceleration lab

Homework due May 23

Volume of a beer bottle        =  V_beer =           =  12 ounces
Alcohol fraction of beer       =  F                = .05
Volume of alcohol in one beer  =  V_alc  =  F V_beer  =  .6 ounces

Using Wikipedia, how many ml is .6 ounces? What is the mass of one ml of alcohol? how many calories is this? How many calories are in 6 beers?

Using Wikipedia, what is the radius of a typical neuron cell in the brain, what is its volume, and what is the volume of the brain? What is the value of the brain volume over the neuron volume?

Using Wikipedia, what is the number of neurons in the brain?

The Krakatoa volcanic explosion generated a sound wave that traveled around the Earth 3 times.

What is the speed of sound and how long does it take sound to go all the way around the Earth?

The distance between North American and Europe is increasing due to continental drift. Using Wikipedia, how fast is the drift? What is the distance from Manhattan to Lisbon? How long will it take continental drift to double this distance?

Final project: Wikipedia

Get an account on Wikipedia and improve a page. Pages in need of improvement nclude:

Greenhouses: Water and fertilizer requirements for crops.

Water quality of rivers, expressed as "Biological oxygen demand".

Sewage treatment: costs, fertilizer yield, biomass yield.

Irrigation: Data on water requirements with and without drip irrigation.

Seawater greenhouses: Data from existing greenhouses.

Desalination: Data from existing plants.

Emergency management: Disaster risk and monetary losses. Cost of prevention.

Iron fertilization of the oceans.

Urban forestry: Data for tree growth rates, trunk size, and height. Solar cells: prices, efficiencies, and element requirements.

Wind turbines: prices, efficiencies, and element requirements.

Electric power distribution.

Prefabricated homes: Data for sizes, prices, and raw materials.

Patents: cost of solar cells, wind turbines, and smartphones.

Any topic relating to the presidential election.

Any topic from the history of science.

"The Hum"

Build a figure and submit it to Wikipedia. You can use physical materials such as posterboard and glitter or you can use computer graphics.

Make a world map figure for any topic in science or politics. These are called "choropleth maps" and they can be made with python or other software.

Visuals for Bennett

1) Our Place in the Universe
Scales of the universe     Aristarchus' observations from Ancient Greece
Christensen:    History of astronomy     Seasons and moon phases
Sim:    Elliptical orbits     Seasons     Moon phases     Phases of Venus, heliocentric model     Ptolemy model     Eclipse shadows
Terence Tao's lecture on measuring cosmic distances
Wikipedia:    Solar system     Sun     Venus     Earth     Moon     Mars     Asteroid belt     Ceres     Io     Europa     Ganymede     Callisto     Titan     Kuiper belt

2) Discovering the Universe for Yourself

Units Labs History of science & technology
David Hogg, "Real-world physics: A dropped bucket"
Problems: Velocity Parallax Mars rover

3) The Science of Astronomy

History of timekeeping
Problems: Latitude and longitude

4) Making Sense of the Universe: Motion, Gravity, Energy

Laws of motion    Gravity
XKCD:    Escape velocity    Gravity wells    Launching a rocket into orbit    Gravity assists and ion drives    Landing on an asteroid
Sim:    My Solar System     Planet orbital speed     Small angles

5) Light and Matter: Reading Messages from the Cosmos

Waves
Sim: Waves on a string Diffraction Blackbody radiation

6) Telescopes: Portals of Discovery

Telescopes
Sim:    Planetary transit of a star    Detection of planets from the motion of the star
Youtube:    Finding exoplanets
XKCD:    Telescopes    Detecting extraterrestrial civilizations
Gary:    Parallax, brightness, and magnitudes
Lab:    Visual resolution

7) Our Planetary System

Solar system
Youtube: Dawn trajectory to Vesta and Ceres Messenger trajectory to Mercury New Horizons trajectory to Pluto
Christensen: Asteroids and comets

8) Formation of the Solar System

Youtube: Star formation in a nebula
Minute Physics: Why is the solar system flat?

9) Planetary Geology: Earth and the Other Terrestrial Worlds

Terrain and mountain height    Tides
Youtube:    Mountain height    Hadley cells Sun    Ocean currents    Hadley cells    Hurricane    Jupiter
Sim:    Tides
Blackman:    Tides
Christensen:    The moon and tides

10) Planetary Atmospheres: Earth and the Other Terrestrial Worlds

Atmospheres    Earth climate    Atmospheric escape    Gases
Sim:    Gases     Balloons and buoyancy     Atmospheric escape
XKCD:    Flying on Titan, Mars, and Venus
Minute Physics:    Atmospheric escape    Brownian motion
Problems:    Pinatubo

11) Jovian Planet Systems

Gas giant composition
Christensen: Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune

12) Asteroids, Comets, and Dwarf Planets: Their Nature, Orbits, and Impacts

Asteroid mining
XKCD: Asteroid impacts

13) Other Planetary Systems: The New Science of Distant Worlds

S2) Space and Time

S3) Spacetime and Gravity

S4) Building Blocks of the Universe

14) Our Star

15) Surveying the Stars Stars

16) Star Birth

17) Star Stuff

Stellar nucleosynthesis
Sim: Build an atom Beta decay Nuclear fission Fusion of hydrogen into helium Fusion of carbon into oxygen by the CNO cycle
Opencourse: The sun

18) The Bizarre Stellar Graveyard

Compact objects    General relativity
Youtube:    Milky Way central black hole
XKCD:    Neutrino damage from a nearby supernova

19) Our Galaxy

Milky Way

20) Galaxies and the Foundation of Modern Cosmology

Galaxy clusters

Youtube: Galaxy formation Galaxy collision

21) Galaxy Evolution

22) Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Fate of the Universe

Hubble's law

23) The Beginning of Time

Minute Physics: Where was the big bang?

24) Life in the Universe

Astrobiology     Molecular biology
Youtube:    ATP synthase    Cell membrane    Undersea volcanism    Deep-sea squid    Breathing cycle
Sim:    Planetary habitable zone

Miscellaneous

Manned Mars mission Spaceships Rockets Particles Special relativity The Multiverse Particle colliders Asteroid defense Global energy Elements Python programming Unix, the "High Valeryn" of operating systems

Index of visuals on jaymaron.com

www.jaymaron.com/mag.html

PHET simulations

Position, velocity, and acceleration
Position, velocity, and acceleration #2
Forces in 1D
Balance on a fulcrum
Projectile motion
Collisions
Density
Pendulum
Ramps
Centripetal acceleration
Velocity and acceleration in 2D
Energy skate park
Masses and springs
Friction and heat
Torque

Gravitational force
Lunar lander
My Solar System

Gases
Gas properties and buoyancy
Liquid buoyancy
Bernoulli law
Liquid pressure
States of matter>

Waves on a string
Diffraction
Blackbody radiation
Resonance
Refraction
Geometric optics
Normal modes
Fourier transform
Radio wave tranceiver

Build an atom
Build a molecule
Molecules and light
Greenhouse effect
Molecule polarity
Photoelectric effect
van der Walls force
Quantum bound states
Neon light
Models of the hydrogen atom
Quantum tunneling

Isotopes
Rutherford scattering
Beta decay
Alpha decay
Nuclear fission

Static electricity
Charges and electric fields
Battery-resistor circuit
Circuit construction
Magnets
Capacitors
Faraday's law

Youtube
* Cosmological galaxy formation
* Galaxy merger
* Galaxy mergers
* Star formation
* Sun
* Ocean currents
* Hadley cells
* Hurricane
* Jupiter
* Dawn spacecraft trajectory to Vesta and Ceres
* Trajectory to Mercury
* New Horizons trajectory to Pluto
* Milky Way black hole
* ATP synthase
* Cell membrane
* Undersea volcanism
* Deep-sea squid
* Breathing cycle
* Antarctica glacier flow
* Colbert Report on Pluto
* Simulation of a small moon in Saturn's rings. Tidal effect.
* Black hole consuming a star
* Planet formation. Low-mass planet
* Planet formation, disk turbulence
* Planet formation. Multiple planets.
* Supernova
* Auroras
* Antikythera device
* Black hole merger
* Simulation of galactic spiral density waves
* Tidal bulge of the Earth induced by the moon
* The Stratolaunch aircraft
* Relativity, Lorentz transform
* Relativity, time dilation
* Relativity and magnetism
* Blackbody radiation
* Large Hadron Collider
* Atmospheric distortion of a star (twinkling).
* "Why is there a macroscopic universe", a lecture by Nima Arkani Hamed.

XKCD articles
* Gravity assists and ion drives
* Launching a rocket into orbit
* Escape velocity
* Landing on an asteroid
* The environment of Titan
* Telescopes
* Detecting extraterrestrial civilizations
* Asteroid impacts
* Neutrino damage from a nearby supernova
* Gravity wells

MinutePhysics

Why is the solar system flat?
Brownian motion
Finding exoplanets
How do airplanes fly?
Star twinkling
Antimatter
Do we expand with the universe?
How big is the universe?
Picture of the big bang (oldest light in the universe)
Tour of the map of the big bang>
Amazing simulation of the evolution of the universe
The true science of parallel universes
How far is a second?
Relativity isn't relative
E=MC^2 is incomplete
The speed of light in glass
Magnets
Einstein and atoms
Higgs boson I
Higgs boson II: Mass
Higgs boson III: How to discover a particle
A brief history of everything featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson
Theory of everything (intro)>
Theory of everything: What is matter?>
Theory of everything III, every force in nature
What are years... and the galactic supermassive black hole