Course website for ASTR-450 (Fall 2008)
Here are some ASTR-450 links. The material contained in these pages is meant to
serve only as a recap of what is taught in the lectures!
Announcements:
- The next assignment is from Chapter 12 and is due on Thursday,
Dec 4. Those problems are: # 25, 27, 28, 31, 33; and # 36, 48.
(Assignments will be graded out of 20 points. 2 points are assigned
for tidiness of your prose. Please submit hard-copies of your work! Electronic
copies, such as in the form of email attachments, will not be accepted.)
- The grades for the Multiple Choice type questions from Section I
of the mid-term exam are given here.
Use the search / find tool of your browser to look for your student ID in the
left-most column there. Your can match the 15 entries in the middle column of
your row against those given at the top (for Paper A) or at the middle
(for Paper B). The total score (out ot 15) is listed in the right-most column.
The class maximum is 15 and the class average is 11.
You must multiply this with 2 and add it to the points you got in the rest of
the problems (out of 34) distributed in class to evaluate your grade (out ot 60).
- Past home assignments can be found here.
- Selective summaries of text chapters are available
here .
- A general rule of thumb: It is often easier to contact me by email
than by phone. However, before contacting me you may want to visit this course website since the answers to some of your questions may already be available here. Finally, allow for at least one day to get a response to your email queries.
Supplementary reading: You may also look up the following
- This recent study sheds further light on how planets are formed and what effect Jupiter has on meteor impacts on Earth.
- A couple of other habitable worlds in the solar system may be
Europa and
Titan. Can you
think of others?
- The scientific method: What makes a hypothesis (such as panspermia) good
even if it is
Wrong? We discussed this at length in the class. It is also explained in detail in Chapter 2 of your text book. If you are interested in learning more, you may want to visit this wikipedia entry.
For questions and suggestions, please
email me!
Sukanta Bose, sukanta@wsu.edu