Phys1160 course information 2021 summer PDF

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PHYS 1160 - Introduction to Astronomy and the Search for Life Elsewhere

Course Information Summer Term, 2021

Table of Contents

Important Information …..

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About the Course …..

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Keeping in Touch …..

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Course Schedule …..

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Textbook …..

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Lessons and Activities …..

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Discussion Groups ……

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Essay Information and Topics …..

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Best Discussion Contributions Submission … 17 Final Test …..

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Important Information The course operates entirely online through Moodle. Log in at: https://moodle.telt.unsw.edu.au/login/index.php

Course Staff Course Coordinator: Dr Shaila Akhter

Course Developer: Prof Jeremy Bailey Teaching Assistants: A teaching assistant is assigned to each group for this course. See the “Course Discussion Groups and Tutors” link on the Moodle page for PHYS1160 for a list.

Assessment • • • •

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Activities (30%) — The 20 course activities (interactive tutorials) are graded and provide 30% of your final grade. Discussion Group Participation (25%) — 15% from contributions to the four module discussions (Module 1, Module 2, Module 3, Module 4/5) and 10% from the Best Discussion Contributions submission due at the end of the course. Essay (20%) — You must write an essay chosen from a range of suggested topics – due 24th January (i.e. at the end of week 3). Final Test (25%) — The final test will be an online test set on the course website in Moodle covering material throughout the course. (due 8th February — the last day of teaching period).

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About the Course One of the first things you will notice about this course is that there are no lectures. Instead course material is provided in the form of online Lessons. These are made of a mix of multimedia material including text and images, videos, animations and simulations. You can step through them page by page, you can display a whole lesson as a single webpage, and you can print them to provide a hardcopy record of the whole course. Associated with each lesson is an interactive tutorial, called an Activity, which will take you step-by-step through aspects of the course content. Activities include videos and simulations, and will set you problems based on these. Most questions in the Activities are graded. Don’t think of the Activities as simply tests of what you covered in the lesson. They may well extend the material covered in the lessons, and require further research in the textbook, or on the internet. Another key part of the course is the discussion forums. Your contributions to the discussion will be graded. In each of the four discussions (Module 1, Module 2, Module 3, Module 4/5) you are expected to post at least one question, and one answer to another student’s question. We are particularly looking for well-researched answers supported by references. The skills used here will also be valuable when you come to write your essay, which will be due at the end of week 3 of the course. An important thing to understand about this course is that it is not about memorizing a lot of facts that you will be subsequently tested on. There is far more material covered in the course than you can expect to remember. What we do hope you will do is develop an understanding of the basic concepts and ideas. Remember that all assignments in this course including the final test are “open book”. When you are working on the assignments you have access to all the resources including the course lessons, the textbook, and the internet. You need to learn how to use these resources efficiently to find whatever information you need. Learning Outcomes On completion of the course you should: 1. have an understanding of key recent developments and concepts in areas including astronomy, space exploration, astrobiology and related disciplines, 2. appreciate the interrelatedness of different scientific disciplines, 3. understand the scientific method, what it means to study something scientifically, and the process of scientific discovery, 4. know that science is a continuing international endeavour, and that scientists are diverse in age, gender, ethnic background and nationality, 5. be competent in using resources on the internet to investigate scientific questions, and in preparing written reports on such investigations.

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Keeping In Touch General questions about how the course operates are best asked through the course discussion forum near the top of the Moodle main page. That way everyone gets to see the answers. Before you ask, though, please check the course information, course FAQs and course discussion. The answer may already be there. If you want to contact a specific member of the team you can do this through Moodle messaging or through email. Who to contact: Contact your group teaching assistant for feedback on marks and marking for the tutor marked assignments (discussions, essays). If you are not sure who your teaching assistant is, use “Participants” on Moodle and select “Teaching Assistant” in the “Current Role” drop-down menu. You can click on the name to send a Moodle message, or choose “User Details” under “User list” to find the email address. For other queries contact the course coordinator Shaila Akhter ([email protected]). For administrative matters such as enrollment issues you can contact the Physics First Year Teaching Unit (Old Main Building G06) via phone (9385 4976) or email (UNSW.to/webforms).! Extensions for Assignments: If you are unable to complete an assignment on time due to illness or other circumstances, then make sure submit a “Special Consideration” request through the centralized UNSW Special Consideration system. It will speed things up if you email your Course Co-ordinator at the same time. Such requests should be submitted no later than 3 days after the assignment deadline. If you know something is coming up in advance (e.g. overseas travel), then make sure to submit a request in advance. Note that UNSW now has a “Fit to Sit / Submit” rule, which means that if you sit an exam or submit a piece of assessment, you are declaring yourself fit to do so and cannot later apply for Special Consideration. More about what this can be found at the Special Consideration link above. Grades Your grades will appear under Grades at the left of your Moodle page as each assignment is marked.

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Course schedule Week Lessons/ Activities 1 Module 1 Introduction to Astronomy

Discussion Group Module-1 4th January – 10th January*

Module-2 11th January – 17th The Solar System January*

Module 3 Life on Earth and in the Solar System

Module-3 18th January – 24th January*

Lessons 9-12 4

Module 4 Stars and Stellar Systems Lessons 13-16 Module 5

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Galaxies and Cosmology Lessons 17-20 Final Test

Module 1 discussion final date 10th January*

Chapter 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Module 2 discussion final date 17th January* Activities 5-8 complete 17th January*

Lessons 5-8 *3

Assignments

Activities 1-4 complete 10th January*

Lessons 1-4 Module 2

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Textbook sections Chapter 1, 3, 4, 5, 6

Module-4/5 25th January – 31st January*

Module-4/5 1st February – 7th February*

Module 3 Discussion final date 24th January* Activities 9-12 complete 24th January* Essay due 24th January * Chapter 13, Module 4/5 discussion 14, 15, 16, final date 31st January* 17, 18 Activities 13-16 complete 31st January* Chapter 19, Activities 17-20 complete and 20, 21, 22, Discussion Best Contributions 23 due 7th February*

Final Test due Mon 8th February

All submission dates are Sunday before midnight – except for the Final Test, which is Monday 8th February before midnight. * Completion dates for activities are suggested completion dates to keep on track with the course. All activities must be completed by 8th February.

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Textbook The recommended textbook for the course is The Cosmic Perspective, by Bennett, Donahue, Schneider & Voit, Seventh Edition, Pearson New International Edition. ISBN: 9781292023304 Publisher: Pearson Higher Ed USA Where to get it: 1. From the UNSW Bookshop – copies are available 2. Online from Pearson Australia as an eBook ($60). The hardcopy is no longer available direct from Pearson (https://pearson.com.au/9781292023304). 3. The UNSW library has multiple copies in the High Use Collection If you are looking at second hand books or other online suppliers you may find other versions of the The Cosmic Perspective 7th, 8th, or 9th editions. Any of these are fine. They all contain the same content but may have minor differences of formatting so page numbers may not exactly match. For example, this book had an 8th edition issued in the US in 2017, and a 9th edition has been released in 2019. (These are available as both International Edition US Edition a single volume, and as two separate volumes, th and in eText formats). The 9 edition is now available as a book in Australia, it is also available as an eBook (https://pearson.com.au/9780135161760). Older editions of the book such as the sixth or fifth edition will obviously not be quite as up to date as the current version, but still retain the same chapter structure and much of the same material, so should be useable for this course. You may come across The Essential Cosmic Perspective. This is a different book – an abridged version with fewer chapters. You may also see versions of the 8th and 9th editions that have been split into two halves – it is suggested you avoid buying these versions. The Cosmic Perspective sometimes comes bundled with software products such as Pearson’s Mastering Astronomy. This software is not used for our course. Another book you may find useful is Life in the Universe by Bennett & Shostak, (Pearson Higher Ed. ISBN 9780134089089). This provides better coverage of the Astrobiology aspects of the course.

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Lessons and Activities Important elements of the course are the series of lessons and activities. These come in pairs, each lesson has a corresponding activity. We recommend that you first have a look through the lesson and then try the corresponding activity. You may find it useful to have the lesson and activity up on your screen at the same time. If you are not sure how to do this see the video - Working with Lessons and Activities. The activities are graded and provide the largest single component of your course grading. As you work through them you will find that some questions have grades and some do not. However, in most cases you will have to correctly answer a question before you can move on to the next screen. You will need to complete an activity before its grades will be entered on your gradebook. The activities are not timed and you can stop and resume working on them at any time. Note that these activities do not have individual completion deadlines. Other course assignments such as the discussions and essays do have deadlines. It is up to you to plan your time for the course appropriately. While you can do the activities at any time, we recommend that you try to complete the activities for each module by the end of the two week period assigned to that module, and do not leave them all until the end of semester. All activities need to be completed by the end of the teaching period.

Module 1 — Introduction Lesson 1 — Introduction to Astronomy The components of the universe (stars, planets and galaxies), the scale of the universe, a brief historical guide to the study of astronomy. Lesson 2 — Introduction to Astrobiology Why life might be common, or might be rare. The science of astrobiology. Where and how can we search for life in the universe? Lesson 3 — Key Concepts Forces and Energy, Gravity, Orbits and Kepler’s laws. Atoms and nuclei. Light and other electromagnetic waves. Lesson 4 — Techniques of Astronomy Telescopes and instruments for different wavelength regions. Observing methods. Spectra and the Doppler shift. Effect of the atmosphere. Observations from space. !

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Module 2 — The Solar System Lesson 5 — The Solar System Introduction to the solar system. Terrestrial and giant planets, satellites, dwarf planets., small solar system bodies. The formation of the solar system. Lesson 6 — The Earth – Evolution of a habitable planet Formation of the Earth and Moon. Age of the Earth. The heavy bombardment. Plate tectonics. Formation of oceans and continents. Evolution of the atmosphere. The faint-young Sun paradox and its resolution. Lesson 7 — Exploring the Solar System Getting to a planet. Types of space missions. The key planetary exploration mission and what we have learnt from them. Ground-based studies of the planets. Lesson 8 — Habitability in the Solar System Definition of a habitable planet. Follow the Water. Past water on Venus. Evidence for water on Mars in the past and now. Evidence for oceans beneath the ice of Jupiter’s moons and Enceladus.! ! !

Module 3 — Life on Earth and in the Solar System ! Lesson 9 — What is Life? Properties of life. Classification of living organisms, Evolution and heredity. The molecular basis for life, DNA, RNA and proteins. Lesson 10 — The History of Life on Earth Methods for studying life’s history. The fossil record. The earliest evidence for life. Molecular methods and the “tree of life”. Extremophiles. Life and the Earth’s atmosphere. Lesson 11 — The Origin of Life Historical ideas on life’s origin. The fundamental problem. The RNA World. Possible pre-RNA worlds. Origin of the building blocks of life. The timing of life’s origin relative to the late heavy bombardment. Could life have come from another planet? Lesson 12 — Life in the Solar System Ideas on life on Mars. Percival Lowell’s canals. Early Mars missions. The Viking missions. The Martian meteorite ALH84001. Methane on Mars, Future Mars missions. Life on the giant planet moons and how we could search for it.

Module 4 — Stars and Stellar Systems Lesson 13 — Our Star, the Sun !

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The Sun’s energy source. Nuclear fusion. Structure of the Sun. Solar activity. The Sun-Earth connection. Lesson 14 — Properties and Evolution of Stars Properties of stars. Spectroscopic classification. The Hertzprung-Russell diagram. Types of stars. Evolution of low and high mass stars. Multiple stars. Star clusters. Lesson 15 — Extrasolar Planets Detection of exoplanets. Doppler, transit, microlensing methods. Types of and properties of exoplanets (e.g. hot Jupiters, eccentric planets). Comparison with our solar system. Lesson 16 — Habitability and life on exoplanets The problem of directly detecting exoplanets. Direct detection methods (giant ground-based telescope. nulling inerferometers, coronographs, Occulters). Signatures of habitability. Biosignatures.

Module 5 — Galaxies and Cosmology ! !

Lesson 17 — Our Milky Way Galaxy Size and structure of the Milky Way. The disk, bulge and halo. Orbits of stars. The galactic centre. Lesson 18 — Recycling of Material in the Galaxy The interstellar medium. Molecular clouds. Star formation. Planetary nebulae. White Dwarfs. Supernovae. Neutron stars and black holes. Lesson 19 — Galaxies and their Evolution Types of galaxies. Distances of galaxies. Looking back in time. The Hubble deep field. Galaxy formation and evolution. Active galaxies and quasars. Lesson 20 — Cosmology The expanding universe and Hubble’s law. The Big Bang theory. The cosmic microwave background. Dark matter and the evidence for it. The accelerating universe and dark energy, The standard model of the universe.

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PHYS1160 Discussion Groups Each group has been assigned a teaching assistant, who will moderate discussion and will mark your assignments. Online discussion groups are an important part of this course. They are the equal second largest component in grading, representing 25% of your overall grade. Discussion groups provide a means to discuss, and better understand, the course material covered in the lessons and activities. The course is divided into five topical modules. There will be four discussions, separate discussion for Modules 1, 2 and 3, and then a combined discussion for Modules 4/5. These discussions can be found under each Module section in Moodle. For the purposes of discussion groups, students will be divided randomly into groups.

Using Discussions Online discussions allow you to enter messages (known as posts) that can be seen by everyone else on the group. Messages are linked in threads. When you add a message to the discussion, you can use the Add a new discussion topic button to start a new thread. Alternatively you can use the Reply button to an existing message to add another message to that thread. When you add a message you can simply type your message into the text box, or you can cut and paste from another program such as a word processor (this is a good idea if you want to add a long message). You can include pictures in your messages. The main purpose of PHYS1160 Modules discussion forum is the interaction between students on the subject areas covered the specific Modules as described below. There is also a “Course Discussion Forum” in the Introduction part to the course that can be used to ask general questions about the course (e.g. details of course operations, assignments etc.). This general discussion area should not be confused with the Module discussions, where you submit entries that are graded!

Course Requirements Discussion group participation provides part of your course grade. As a minimum requirement, we expect you to contribute at least one question, and at least one researched answer or follow-up comment to another student’s question, to each of the four discussions (Module 1, Module 2, Module 3, Module 4/5). You are welcome to make additional contributions to maximise your marks, which will reflect the quality of your posts and your participation in the discussion.

Guidelines for Discussion Group Use In the first discussion group please post a brief introduction about yourself. There will be an introduction thread, and you should post your introductions as a reply to this thread (to avoid cluttering up the discussion with many threads). These are not graded and do not count as your required entries!

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The questions you post on the module discussion group can be anything related to the subject matter for the module (and since we have a course that covers a very wide range this is not much of a restriction). Questions might relate to terms or concepts that came up in the lessons that you don’t understand, might request further explanation of some aspect of the subject matter, or might be just something (course related) that you have always wanted to know, but hasn’t been covered in the course. Your teaching assistants and course coordinator may also post questions to get discussion started. Normally each question should start a new thread (use the Add a new discussion topic button). When you enter a message there is a “Subject” field. Please try to put something meaningful in here that describes what your question is about. This makes it easier for everyone to navigate the discussion group. The usual rules on attribution and plagiarism apply to discussion group posts as for any assignment! If you use material from the web, journals or books, then you must reference that source in your post. Discussion Group participation is graded on quality (not quantity) of posts and engagement in discussion (such as follow-up questions and responses). Remember that posting just one answer and one question is a minimum requirement and is usually not sufficient to a...