11P Science

one of the problems I am running into finding resources on the astronomy topic is that they tend to be American, I guess because they are the people that really have a space program. But they haven’t metricated, so they talk in miles per hour on all their sites. Any way… here is a link to a handy and very simple page on launching satellites  http://www.gma.org/surfing/satellites/launch.html  and note the other bits at the bottom which you might find useful. We had better start doing some homework on this stuff, so look forward to a worksheet tomorrow, for tonight do anything we haven’t done from page 96 to 102. Don’t slay yourselves, just do 20 mins and leave it at that.

Here’s that link to the satellite page: http://www.wisegeek.com/how-many-satellites-are-orbiting-the-earth.htm

 For homework do question one on page 96. Please read the answer on retrograde motion at the back of the book for ideas on how to explain retrograde motion… They probably do a lot better than me.

Here is a link to an animation of how retrograde motion works. Please note the bit at the bottom which says the effect when we overtake the outmore planets from us, as opposed to the innermore planets like Venus  http://www.scienceu.com/observatory/articles/retro/retro.html 

Today we finally started the real astronomy with the planets and the model of the solar system. What strikes me every time I set one of those up is how huge the sun is compared to the planets, and how unspeakable vast space is. Remember that is only our solar system – its a great deal vaster when you start mapping the spaces between the galaxies, or within the galaxies too. If you feel the need to do some homework, do the question 3 from page 76.

Have just downloaded and printed the Standard, the old exam papers and the marking schedules and exemplars for astronomy – you may want to do something similar

http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/ncea/assessment/view-detailed.do?standardNumber=90192