Session Date
Lesson Topic
Galaxy poster
Lesson Outline
Bobby was so eager to start on his new project: A poster on galaxies! We looked at Hubble's Tuning Fork, where the galaxies are arranged according to their morphology - the great Edwin Hubble was the first one to notice that galaxies had these different shapes, and tried to make almost taxonomical sense out of them. The main galaxy shapes are: elliptical, spiral, barred spiral, and irregular. So the galaxy shape is prefaced by a letter (E, S, Sb) and a number (usually 0 to 6) which defines the amount of ellipticity in the case of ellipticals (0 is more round, 6 is more squashed) and the tightness of the spirals in the case of the S and Sb galaxies. We started gathering material for Bobby's poster - we found excellent images of a barred spiral and an elliptical thus far, in addition to a very informative diagram of the structure of a typical spiral galaxy, showing the central bulge and nucleus, the disk, and the halo.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Bobby was so pooped today! But he worked very well for the first forty-five or so minutes of class, and he really was very eager to get the material for his poster. He was trying so hard to stay focused, but he himself confessed his tiredness. So, since we had concentrated so hard for the majority of the time, I thought he might enjoy learning a card trick (since he'd been talking about them all day long ... as always, I try to inject a spot of learning in extracurricular activities as well, and we talked a bit about illusions, and how they encourage critical thinking).
Session Hours
1.00
Hours Attended
1.00
Entry Status
Review Status
Student Name(s)
Subject
School