Thread: Resources on Astronomy, Physics and Space

Hello Everyone--and happy new palindromic year!

I am a physicist, retired from space research as of September 2001, just past my 70th birthday (see [url]http://www.phy6.org/Education/wstern.html[/url]). Over the years I have been active in science education (and also science history), produciong articles, talks, even one short enrichment text for middle schoolers.

My concern has been that science classes (especially in high school physics and earth science) tend to be stiff and boring, short of modern material and in links to culture, society and current technology. History can provide many such links and stories, and from working on space research, I also felt teachers could use more interesting space-related material, because space excites students.

To provide material of this sort, I created during the last few years 3 large web sites, each essentially a book. The largest, and the one closest to high school needs (though also well suited for self-study) is "From Stargazers to Starships," a non-calculus course . It includes 42 lesson plans, timelines, teachers guide, problems, glossary etc. etc. Two others, non-mathematical, are "The Great Magnet, the Earth" and "The Exploration of the Earth's Magnetosphere." They are non-commercial, available to anyone, and I can prepare disks (here in my home) for those who would like a stand-alone version. All were translated to Spanish by Mr. Jesus Mendez, a volunteer living near Bilbao, and the web also has German and French translations of "The Great Magnet." The sites are periodically updated and more may be added in the future.

The hard part is getting the education community to take notice. The sites get about 100,000 visitors per month (a million hits or so), and many e-mail messages, but the education community is so much larger! That is why I joined "TeacherFocus" earlier today.

I hope to hear from you: comments and suggestions are welcome, volunteers to help test the material or to add to it, even more so. For starters, I suggest you look up

[url]http://www.phy6.org/prospect.htm[/url]
or
[url]http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/prospect.htm[/url]

It is an outline of the web sites, with links to their home pages and to pages covering more than 80 different topics. Choose some topics you are interested in, then let me know what you think and suggest.

David P. Stern
Greenbelt, Maryland