Mathematics and Society - OS X Lion Server

to MATffEMATICS AND ASTRONOMYJust like our ancestors who searched the heavens for clues to good and evilomens, we cannot escape noticing the sky. As we look upward, we see the everchangingmoon moving across the sky night after night. Each day the sun rises andsets. The stars reappear each night, but the winter sky does not look the same asthe summer sky.Do you ever wonder why the sun and moon follow these paths over and over? Whythe star constellations are different each season? Why the lighted portion of themoon changes throughout the month? Why Venus is sometimes a morning star and atother times an evening star? Why winters and summers come and go?Since the beginning of history,people have watched the heavens andtried to explain what they have seen.Mathematics has helped them organizeand interpret their observations.Many important discoveries basedsolely on observation were made evenbefore the invention of the telescope.Copernicus demonstrated that the sunwas the center of the solar system andthat the earth revolved around the sun;Kepler concluded that the orbits ofthe planets were ellipses, not circles;early astronomers accurately described the sun's apparent path among the stars.Like the early astronomers, students can discover much about the universe withoutthe use of sophisticated equipment. The activities in this section ask studentsto make observations, record data and use mathematics to interpret their results.A wide variety of astronomy topics are included. Students can determine thenumber of stars visible in the sky at One time without a telescope; make and read asundial; measure the heating effect of the sun; make a scale drawing of the solarsystem; measure the diameter of the moon; discover Kepler's third law of planetarymotion; examine the orbits of comets; build a solar oven; and measure the distanceto the sun. Since distances in the universe are so great, measurements must be madeindirectly. Several methods are presented in the activities. Scale drawings,charts and graphs are used to help students discover relationships.71