Earth, Moon, and Planets · Astronomy
I learned about the basics of what the title suggests: earth, moons, and planets. I also gained a lot of quantitative skills through the psets.
Homework sheets, a few quizzes and tests.
Light, but still more than some other intro astro classes: in-class lecture tutorials are 5% of grade, basically attendance two midterms (each done individually and with a partner for the best possible grade) homework assignments almost every week (can be kind of hard, might require some googling as you often haven't gotten to the material in class)
A lot!!! I think that this course really breaks the idea of physics and let you understand how the universe works
Planets, the moon and its cycles, formation of stellar bodies, seasons, climate change.
Professor Crotts is quite possible the worst professor in the history of Columbia. He will "lecture" on one thing, make you buy a hundred dollar book on another, and test you on something complete different. His class is useless. He goes on long tangents that has nothing to do with the lecture or anything relevant at all. He teaches science in class but has math everywhere else. Please avoid this class if at all possible.
I love Professor Agueros and I love this class. I'm a Barnard psych major taking astronomy to fulfill my outside science, and the kid inside me that loved learning about the solar system in elementary school is completely satisfied. Professor Agueros is really engaging and thoughtful. His lectures remind me a bit of high school courses: he encourages questions, takes time to explain things repeatedly, and uses real-world examples to get his points across. He does a lot of think-pair-share/vote-think-pair-share activities where you consult your neighbor to answer a specific question, and he also loves assigning lecture tutorials, where you spend a portion of class working with a partner to answer a worksheet. He carries the partner theme onto the actual exams: you take the exam individually, turn it in, then take the exact same exam with a partner. The grades are averaged if they help you, and the partner exam is ignored if it hurts you. It's a really nice, albeit strange, grading style. My only gripe is that there was no syllabus until halfway through the semester.
I learned how to dissect a word problem, use equations, and convert units. I learned about the makeup of our solar system and solar systems other than ours. I was particularly impacted by the lecture on climate change—although it's a topic I hear about constantly, the professor provided a deeply informed, illuminating perspective that expanded my understanding of the topic. I feel like I better understand outer space now.
I remember the incident incident referred to in the May 16, 2011 review, and that is not what happened at all. The student asked a question, and the professor asked to come back to it. When he did a few minutes later, the student had fallen asleep. That particular student fell asleep often. The reviewer seems to have been unconscious too to have been so unaware of what was happening. . . . . . . . . .
transits, kepler's 3 laws, newton's 3 laws, apparent motions, etc.