Education
Welcome to Astronomy 161
Welcome to Astronomy 161, an engaging introduction to the solar system led by Professor Richard Poggi from Ohio State University. This course explores humanity's journey through the cosmos, from ...
Welcome to Astronomy 161
Education •
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Interactive Transcript
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Hello, my name is Richard Poggi, professor of astronomy at the Ohio State University,
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and it is my pleasure to welcome you to these lecture podcasts for astronomy 161,
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Introduction to the Solar System, of course being taught during the autumn quarter of 2006,
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on the Ohio State University main campus in Columbus, Ohio.
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Over the next ten weeks, we will undertake an exploration of the solar system
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for mankind's earliest observations of the night sky to the latest discoveries of planets around other stars.
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This is a constantly changing field, and in fact some of the topics we will talk about in the course of the class,
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I can't even begin to guess at because we haven't discovered them yet.
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astronomy 161 is the first quarter of a two quarter sequence we teach each year at Ohio State.
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The lectures are intended for non-science majors, and they are pitched to the descriptive level with plenty of quantitative examples,
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but not a lot of mathematics. It is not really heavy on the math.
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The emphasis is on the science and the ideas, and a bit of the history behind the where our ideas came from.
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The lectures are designed to be listened to as part of a sequence as part of the entire class,
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but each one I designed to be relatively well self-contained so that you can listen to an individual topic that interests you with pretty good benefit.
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Of course, you're only going to get the audio portion of my lectures.
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Astronomy is a very visual field with studying graphics from telescopes and spacecraft,
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but unfortunately a combination of copyright laws and still some of the limitations of the technology
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prevent me from actually delivering a lot of those pictures in this format.
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Despite that, you can always visit the web pages and get my lecture notes,
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and some, but not all of the graphics are available there because of applicable copyright laws,
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so we have to work as well as we can with the restrictions, but we can do quite well.
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This is the second time that I've taught a class using lecture podcasts as a supplementary material.
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The first time was last winter when I taught astronomy 162.
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My primary purpose in making these lecture recordings is to give the students a new and very useful teaching tool.
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They can record these lecture recordings, download them onto their MP3 players or into their computers,
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and listen to a lecture over again any time they wish in a simple, portable and efficient way.
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A lot of my students from astronomy 162 wrote back to me and told me how useful these lectures were in studying for them.
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They could go back over a lecture they missed or a lecture they didn't quite get,
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because I talk a little quick sometimes, and actually hear it again while they're studying and looking at the notes of the book.
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Other students used these lectures as a way to fill in when they had to miss because of illness or because they were away
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for sports teams or something like that.
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They could actually download the lectures and listen to them in the bus or at home while they're ill,
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and keep up with the class. It's a very content rich class, and this gives them a way to keep up.
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The response from students was overwhelmingly positive. A lot of people said they came into it skeptically,
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but they really got to like them and listen to the recordings week after week,
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and it's that kind of response that makes me want to keep doing this for students.
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The other thing that was quite surprising about that first time of doing podcasts was how much response I've gotten
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from people outside the university literally worldwide.
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I even six months after 162 is over, I'm still getting emails once or twice or three times a week
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with people who've listened to these lectures, they've found them on the web or on iTunes,
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and they've downloaded them and listened to them while commuting, maybe one of the guys a farmer listens to
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while he's plowing his fields, and a lot of people are finding them useful because they're lifelong learners.
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They've always wanted to take an astronomy class, they've never had time, and the new technology of podcasting
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gives them a way to listen to these lectures and follow along with us.
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And to those people I say a special welcome to this class, I'm happy to have you come along and listen in.
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In fact, feel free to email me every now and then with a few questions, although I'll give first priority to my
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live students here in Columbus, and let me just know what you think of the lectures and how you're listening to them,
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and that gives me a way of knowing how these lectures are working.
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So again, welcome to Astronomy 161.
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It's going to be a fun quarter, and I look forward to a very interesting exploration of the solar system.