ASTRONOMY & SCIENCE
One of the most important jobs that you will have while taking this course will be to learn the specific meanings of the words and phrases as they pertain to the physical concepts of astronomy. We can then explain and discuss these ideas and how they relate to what we observe in our everyday lives. I hope that you will take this advice seriously and learn the meanings of new terms that you encounter as we go along. Not only will these terms be important on examinations, but they will be critical in understanding the explanations and descriptions of material during the entire course.
Unless you have studied science in the past, this course will probably
be quite different from other classes you are accustomed to taking. Science
courses often have a bad reputation for being difficult to understand. This,
I feel, is basically due to the fact that the study techniques necessary
to cope with science are different from those you are accustomed to. The
study of science can, therefore, be of great benefit because it will add
another dimension to your thinking that will be useful in other areas of
your life. This "scientific method" of experimentation and evaluation
is being used more and more in areas such as psychology, history, and art.
The systematic analysis of data and the step-by-step process of decision
making that have ben the backbone of science for many years are proving
to be very strong tools in other subject areas as well.