KEY MESSAGE: Funded by the National Science Foundation,Lecture-Tutorials for Introductory Astronomy is designed to help make large lecture-format courses more interactive with easy-to-implement activities that can be integrated into existing course structures. The Second Edition of the Lecture-Tutorials for Introductory Astronomy contains nine new activities that focus on planetary science, system related topics, and the interactions of Light and matter. These new activities have been created using the same rigorous development cycle that was used for the highly successful first edition.   The Night Sky: Position, Motion, Seasonal Stars, Solar vs. Sidereal Day, Ecliptic, Star Charts. Fundamentals of Astronomy: Kepler’s 2^nd Law, Kepler’s 3^rd Law, Newton’s Laws and Gravity, Apparent and Absolute Magnitudes of Stars, The Parse, Parallax and Distance, Spectroscopic Parallax.  Nature of Light in Astronomy: The Electromagnetic (EM) Spectrum of Light, telescopes and Earth’s Atmosphere, Luminosity, Temperature and Size, Blackbody Radiation, Types of Spectra, Light and Atoms, Analyzing Spectra, Doppler Shift. Our Solar System: The Cause of Moon Phases, Predicting Moon Phases, Path of Sun, Seasons, Observing Retrograde Motion, Earth’s Changing Surface, Temperature and Formation of Our Solar System, Sun Size. Stars Galaxies and Beyond: H-R Diagram, Star Formation and Lifetimes, Binary Stars, The Motion of Extrasolar Planets, Stellar Evolution, Milky Way Scales, Galaxy Classification, Looking at Distant Objects, Expansion of the Universe.  For all readers interested in astronomy.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Lecture Tutorials for Introductory Astronomy (Educational Innovation-Astronomy) (Paperback) Adam's "Lecture Tutorials" collection is an excellent suppliment to any astronomy textbook. While most text books include a couple of introductory chapters on naked-eye astronomy the material included is often surface deep at best and downright confusing at worst. Much of this is because the topics covered (i.e.-the celestial sphere, daily and yearly motions of the stars, sun and moon, etc) are highly abstract and require activities that force the student to move away from memorization towards an understand of the apparent motions and what causes them. The Lecture Tutorials are a test ed set of just such activities based on a wealth of astronomy education research. They can be used in both large scale classes and smaller groups to get students to work through the difficult misconceptions and misunderstands that oftentimes beset the subjects being studied. The activities range throughout the standard astronomy curriculum but, in my opinion, the best activites are those that focus on the apparent motions of the Sun, Moon and stars. I recommend this to any student trying to better understand the subject and for any educator who wants help moving their students from "fun facts" to deeper understanding. Comment | | (Report this)

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