Free download Understanding Our Universe, 3rd edition by Stacy Palen, Laura Kay, George Blumenthal. Published by W. W. Norton & Company. English | PDF | 576 Pages | ISBN: 978-0393631715
Description
Research shows that active learning supports deeper, long-term understanding. The Third Edition text and media package gives students more opportunities to interact with astronomy―both in real life and online.
The new edition provides all the resources you need to make it easy to incorporate active learning into the classroom.
You may wonder why it is a good idea to take a general-education science course. Scientists, including astronomers, have a specific approach to understanding new information.
Astronomers “understand” when they can make correct predictions about what will happen next. Astronomers “know” when an idea has been tested dozens or even hundreds of times and the idea has stood the test of time.
There are two fundamental goals to keep in mind as you take this course. The first is to understand some basic physical concepts and become familiar with the night sky.
The second is to learn to think like a scientist and learn to use the scientific method, or process of science, to answer questions in this course and make decisions about science and technology in your life. We have written the third edition of Understanding Our Universe with these two goals in mind.
Throughout this book, we emphasize the content of astronomy (the masses of the planets, the compositions of stellar atmospheres) as well as how we know what we know.
The scientific method is a valuable tool that you can carry with you, and use, for the rest of your life. The most effective way to learn something is to “do” it. Whether playing an instrument or a sport or becoming a good cook, reading “how” can only take you so far. The same is true of learning astronomy