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1 Welcome to Astronomy 101! Professor Bruce Balick, 543-7683 [email protected] Physics-Astronomy Building, C308 office hours anytime by appt I love to revel in philosophical matters–especially astronomy. I study astronomy more than any other foolishness there is.!!!!- Letter from Mark Twain, !!! San Francisco, Aug. 1, 1869!How do you learn? “Visual” or “Verbal”? “From Piazza della Signoria, head east for two blocks, turn right at the caffè “DiJulio”, and look for an old stone tower. Cross the street to its right (Via Michelangelo). Make the next left.. After two blocks look for a piazza and the church Santa Croce.” Do you prefer images or words? Where? What? When? Who? You! Sections & Lectures ARC 147 !TAs’ Offices PAB “B” wing 3rd floor, Bruceʼs Office PAB “C”wing 3rd floor, C308 [email protected] Where? What? When? Who? You! http://www.astro.washington.edu/astro101/ Where? What? When? Who? You! http://www.astro.washington.edu/astro101/2 Where? What? When? Who? You! Where? What? When? Who? You! • The cumulative IQ of this class exceeds 25,000 in raw intellectual power. • 250 knowledgeable people as bright as you can run an entire state very well. • How can we harness this incredible power? • Learning, thatʼs how. Learning to – Observe! Pay attention to the natural world. – Analyze data and find the underlying trends – Develop hunnches and hypotheses from trends. – Synthesize and critically evaluate new ideas. Where? Who? When? What? You! • See the home page! www.astro.washington.edu/astro101 • get the text (or share it). 5th or 6th edition OK • calculators with scientific notation (or use web calculators such as google; e.g. ‘3e8/5.7e-4’) Grades • 40% of your course grades are labs • Late labs have little course value: 0 to 2 weeks 50% penalty; >2 weeks 0% • mid term 20%, final 30%, quizzes 10% Announcements • Yesterday: Start “Sizes & Distances Lab” – Youʼll really really want a cheap calculator with scientific (powers of ten) capability! – Or learn to use Google or other web calculators • Friday reading: Chapter 1, 2, 3 • Next Week: Tuesday, Thursday: Planetarium, Room A222 Right away: review powers of ten, plotting see various links on the lectures page for today: Click ʻem all Announcements Astronomy can be “sublime” Peter De Vries: The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe. • We can know only what light reveals. • We canʼt touch stuff, or mess with it. • (we generally ‘understand’ by modeling what we see using principles of physics)3 What we are planning to cover… • physics you need to interpret what you see • Stars • Galaxies • Dark matter • Black holes • Supernovae • The Big Bang • Gravitational lensing • Formation and evolution of the Universe, galaxies, stars, solar system • The Curvature of Space and Time • The Search for Life in the Universe What weʼre not going to cover… • Planets (take Astro 150!) • Comets & asteroids • Solar system formation • Constellations (brief mention) Why are you here? A. Bonding with your Inner Trekkie. B. Needed a Quantitative Reasoning credit and figured this was easier than The Calculus of Hypergeometrical Protein Folding. C. ASTRONOMY KICKS A**!!!!!! and the Universe is extremely cool, quixotic, and bizarro Hubble Space Telescope just look… Why does Astronomy kick a**? stars & star-forming nebulae Why does Astronomy kick a**? Stellar winds and eruptions Why does Astronomy kick a**? normal & colliding


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UW ASTR 101 - Lecture Notes

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