For this lesson you will need the following:
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1. the Nova Educational VCR Tape “Is There any Intelligent Life Out There ?”
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2. A map of the solar system
First, you are going show the first section of the tape mentioned above. This section shows a group of scientists looking at a screen that appears to be very much like screen of an oscilloscope. The segment that is being referred to shows a spike on the screen. After the spike is seen on the screen the group of scientist become very excited.
Show the VCR tape segment two times. The first time tell the students as little as possible about what they are about to see. I would also turn the sound off during the first showing. This segment referred to is about five to ten minutes in length.
Ask the class to explain what they might have seen. Ask the class what was the spike in the tape ?
Why were the scientist so excited ? Where are those in coming signals coming from ?
On the second viewing play the tape with the sound on so that students can follow the events only seen before. After the second viewing, explain that the scientist are studying radio waves.
Ask the class questions such as, how fast does was the signal traveling ? How strong is the signal?
In conclusion, explain it a radio signal came from the nearest star let as say six or seven light years away, how long would it take that signal to travel from Pluto to earth, and from the earth to the sun?
Hand out journals, and have students write personal observations.
Give words as a home work assignment. Have students bring back the definitions of each word and tell what section in the journal each word should be placed in.
(figure available in print form)
Figure 3. Kepler’s ideas about the movements of the planets were based on the sun-centered planetary system of Copernicus, shown here in a drawing from
On Revolutions
, Book 6, published by Copernicus in 1543, the year of his death. In this schematic figure. Copernicus showed the orbits as circular. Kepler discovered that they were actually, elliptical. (Courtesy of The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University.)
(figure available in print form)
Figure 6. These notations for the pitches of the planets were described by Kepler as ”the single movements [of the planets] in the familiar terms of notes. Ghey do not form articcxulately the interfmediate positions, which you see here filled by notes, as they do the extremes, because they struggle from one extreme to the opposite not by leaps and intervals but by a continuum of tunings and actually traverse all the means (which are potentially infinite)—which cannot be expressed by me in any other way than by a continuous series of intermediate notes.” (From Johannes Kepler,
Harmonices Mundi
.)
Figure I. medieval and Modern Notations
(figure available in print form)