Handouts and Extras
General Information
- Syllabus (PDF file)
The main syllabus for the course. This is also available for browsing online.
- Exam 1 Slides
These are the slides (in a slightly annoying web interface format) that I showed in class on Wednesday, January 29, as part of the review for Exam 1 on Monday, February 3.
Review Problems
None of these are due as homework; they are here for your own studying purposes.
- Final Exam Review Materials
- Solutions to the review problems will be available late on Wednesday.
Review Topics for the Final Exam (PDF format). This will be a cumulative final which encompases all of the course.
Sample Review Final (in PDF format)
NOTE: as originally posted, there was an error in problem 18 of the review problems. You may want to download this again to get the updated version.Solutions to the Sample Review Final (in PDF format)
.
- Exam 3 Review Material
- Exam 3 will be given on Wednesday, April 9 (or perhaps Fri, Apr. 11)
Review Topics for Exam #3 (PDF format). This exam covers material from Chapters 14, 15, 16, and 18, plus the in-class discussion of extrasolar planets. The primary material is what we've focused on in class; this list of topics tells you what we've discussed.
Review Sample Test for Exam #3 (PDF format). A set of sample problems similar to what might be on the test. (Don't expect these problems to correspond 1:1 to problems on the test, though!) Possibly useful for your study purposes. Solutions will be posted in several days.
Solutions to the Review Sample Test (PDF format).
- Exam 2 Review Material
- Exam 2 was given on Friday, March 14.
Review Topics for Exam #2 (PDF format): A list of topics, broken down to a fairly detailed level, which we have covered. You should be familiar with the basic ideas behind the broad topics for Exam #2.
Review Sample Test for Exam #2 (PDF format).
- Review Problems 2003-February-05
Solutions are available as a 70K PDF file.
- Review Problems 2003-February-12
Solutions are available as a 58K PDF file.
- Review Problems 2003-February-20
Solutions are available as a 44K PDF file.
- Review Problems 2003-March-17
Solutions are available in PDF format.
- Review Problems 2003-March-31
Solutions are available in PDF format.
Computer Animations
- Celestial Sphere Movie
Huge File Warning! This is a 10MB file. If you have a fast connection, it won't be too bad, but if you dial in with a phone modem, it will take rather a long time to download.
This is the "celestial sphere" animation shown in class on January 15. This movie was created using Blender, a free 3d modelling/animation program, with some help from The Gimp. It was encoded with MEncoder.
This is a MPEG4 file. On Linux, you can play it with MPlayer, which is what I used to play it in class. For Windows or Mac, you will need to download the plugin from DivX Player 5.0 (the link points to the download site for Windows, but from that page you can find a Mac player). This does seem to work under Windows 98 using Windows Media Player once you've installed the DIVX Codec; for Windows, the "free" non-Adware version appears to be sufficient on a four-year-old computer.
- Moon Phase Movie (1MB AVI file)
Big file warning! This file is a megabyte in size; no problem for a broadband connection, but it will take a little while to download over a modem.
This is the animation shown to demonstrate the phases of the moon in class on January 20, 2003. Like the video above, it's an AVI movie file which uses the MPEG4 compression algorithm, and was created with Blender and The Gimp. Maps of Earth and the Moon came from James Hastings-Trew's Planetary Image Maps page.