how can I make a telescope interesting for highschool students?
Pamela asked:
I am part of the engineering orientation crew at my university and I need to make a project. I decided to do a telescope but I do not know if the students will find it interesting, so I want to make sure somebody will want to build it.
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I am part of the engineering orientation crew at my university and I need to make a project. I decided to do a telescope but I do not know if the students will find it interesting, so I want to make sure somebody will want to build it.
February 20th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Teach them how to build one or do any “hands-on” activity involving the telescope.
February 21st, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Simple. The way my teachers did it was tell us that we could see Pluto with a (low power) telescope. When we looked, there was indeed Pluto… well the disney version… then spent lessons working on focusing our own (even lower powered home built) telescope on pluto…. ahh good times
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:30 am
Tell the Guys that Chicks really like Guys that have there names on discoveries and that they might really find something. Make a competition out of that and the guys that are not already into it will be. The girls that are not already interested in astronomy will suddenly be if you can get the guys that are not interested to be interested. Strange how That works even if it is a mean trick to get someone to learn something. Also let everyone know that if they are interested to let you know discreetly this will really help the students who would otherwise be afraid to show interest due to popularity.
Might work ?
February 24th, 2009 at 4:10 am
I think the guys would want to view the coeds sunbathing on that sorority house rooftop across campus. But seriously, isn’t it interesting that modern low earth orbitting photo imaging satellites are telescopes pointed toward the Earth? Wouldn’t it be interesting to take a high power telescope on earth and try to view the International Space Station directly? Of course the sun reflective lighting would have to be right, and the space station would only be over your location on Earth for a limited viewing time. And you would have to have a computerized tracking telescope such as described in the link below. So in general, the theme would be “how can we use modern computer controlled tracking telescopes for more than just classical stargazing?” Of course the tracking can be tied closely to a GPS data interface to the PC computer and image detection and recognition algorithms running on the PC etc.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:35 am
No help and a stupid reward.
Seriously. Well, I get motivated that way because my college is a very sick institution where we spend ten years studying engineering and getting our asses kicked just because.
Anyway, I think that just telling them to build a telescope, giving no information about it, except how to look for the information, and promise two pounds of apples and five litres of wine to the first achiever, that would be great for me.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I made a telescope when I was in high school. It was fun to build and then to test to see how powerful it was. Looking for the various planets and star groups and seeing how well the telescope did was really interesting. The views of the moons craters was also quite impressive.
I made a 4″ refractor with a cardboard carpet roll, a couple of round oat meal boxes and a simple eyepiece. It worked great, I could see the phases of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter and of course the craters on the moon.