Video
Summary: This video lesson
has the goal of introducing students
to galaxies as large collections of
gravitationally bound stars. It explores
the amount of matter needed for a star
to remain bound and then brings in the
idea of Dark Matter, a new kind of matter
that does not interact with light. It
is best if students have had some high
school level mechanics, ideally Newton's
laws, orbital motion and centripetal
force. The teacher guide segment has
a derivation of centripetal acceleration.
This lesson should be mostly accessible
to students with no physics background.
The video portion of this lesson runs
about 30 minutes, and the questions
and demonstrations will give a total
activity time of about an hour if the
materials are all at hand and the students
work quickly. However, 1 1/2 hours is
a more comfortable amount of time. There
are several demonstrations that can
be carried out using string, ten or
so balls of a few inches in diameter,
a stopwatch or clock with a sweep second
hand and some tape. The demonstrations
are best done outside, but can also
be carried out in a gymnasium or other
large room. If the materials or space
are not available, there are videos
of the demonstrations in the module
and these may be used.
Read
Teacher's
Guide
to this video lesson (download
in Word
and PDF
formats)
Download
Written
Transcript
of this video lesson (download
in Word and PDF formats)
Download
Images
from this video lesson (download
in PDF
format)
Additional
Online Resources:
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Peter
Fisher
