Astronomy Process of Science due 11/22

Alix Fernando

Scientific Process

Astronomy

At first I found astronomy difficult but towards the middle it was interesting and I learned a lot about our universe and how it works. With astronomy the process of science is not linear at all. In order for me to do research about planet Earth I had to make observations of what I saw in the sky during day and night. Some observations included the direction and times of sunsets, sunrises, and where the moon rises and sets. Then in order to understand the rotation of earth we had to watch videos on you tube about Foucault’s pendulum. While doing all this research a lot of questions arise and they need answers. This makes me think, read more information, ask questions, watch videos, explain what I learned to my partners, put our information together to see a bigger picture, ask more questions, and investigate the known to understand everything we are seeing and hearing about our universe. For example we spent a lot of time on seasons and why we have different seasons during the year. I learned we have different seasons due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis and how it is orbiting around the sun. While the Earth is orbiting around the sun different parts of the Earth are pointed in the direction of the sun or away from the sun which causes it to be cold or warm in different areas of the world. Also while researching about the universe we have to be careful with information because it is always changing. For example Pluto use to be a planet and now it is not because it doesn’t fit all the characteristics of what a planet is. Also scientist still don’t know the age of the moon because new craters always appear on the moon and the only way to tell the age of our lunar moon is to count each crater, which hasn’t been accomplished. Next, the part of astronomy that was a bit difficult was when we talked about Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation and the formula fgravity*M1*M2/ d^2.  This meant that the force between two objects is proportional to the mass of the objects and inversely proportional to the square of the distance. At first this was difficult to understand but I found this equation important because it helped me research Newton’s Cannon. Newton’s cannon was my group project and Newton used this to explain how a projectile can orbit around the Earth at a certain speed. After researching we found out the speed is 8000m/s, so this means for every horizontal distance of 8000 m/s the Earth curves downward by 5 meters. This was an amazing discovery because it helped start the invention of satellites and how to send them up into space to orbit around the Earth. With this amazing invention we are able to observe our planet and see how it works. As my group and I researched Newton’s cannon it was difficult because we had to look up many websites, definitions, and put all the info together like a puzzle to figure out Newton’s cannon and why it is important. Also what I like about Newton’s Cannon is that I can relate it back to the physics portion of class because we also worked with projectiles and Newton’s three laws. Projectile meaning it is an object where only the force of gravity is acting on it. For example we did a lot of free fall experiments where we recorded length, time, and calculated the force of gravity pulling on an object. So it was easy to understand what projectile meant because we worked with it in physics and then I related it to astronomy. Now instead of the object falling and hitting the ground it is different with astronomy, in astronomy we have the object falling but staying in a circular orbit due to gravity pulling on it and making it orbit around the Earth. I think it is crazy how after learning one science it has so many similarities or leads into another topic of science. I enjoyed how as a class we all researched different points of astronomy and taught it to one another through a visual presentation. According to the different learning styles it seems like everyone learned best through the psych-motor domain because people had resources to touch and look at so they could examine and interpret the information in their own ways. Also as a class we learned through our cognitive domains when we had to use excel to make data and graphs to look at and compare it with our world maps. I found this hard because I don’t learn through the cognitive domain and it was difficult to understand the graphs, but I got it now. For example when you came over and started explaining and showing us the globe and how it rotates that was great. Your quick presentation gave me a visual and this made the learning easy for me. After your explanation everything was clear and it was easy to see how the sun elevation could be high in some graphs or what season it is and what the temperature is like. It was fun and I enjoyed learning with my group because I didn’t feel alone or confused. Anyways I think astronomy was fun and I wish we could have spent more time on it but I still like physics better. It was nice to learn about the planets and I think it is scary how gravity plays a huge role in our planet. Sometimes learning about science is scary because all these what if’s float around and I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to planet Earth because I enjoy living here and I am thankful to be a part of this planet that has a human race.