Astronomy A103 Dr. Edward Rhoads LD 156P Homepage: m

Goal: To understand what Science is, what it does, and as to how Astronomy is useful to our society. Objectives: 1.To understand what goes into Scientific Models 2.To understand what is meant by Scientific Theory 3.To Brainstorm uses for Astronomy

What is Science? To attempt to gain an understanding work on the following example: You are buying a house. The house is $100,000. The loan is 6% interest for 30 years. You type this information into a website which estimates your mortgage payment and it claims that the monthly payment will be $600 per month. How much money will you have to pay to pay off the mortgage over that 30 year span?

Assumptions Assumptions are values we assume to be true or that their effect on the final result is negligible. What have we assumed here?

Assumptions Constant interest rates Constant payment each month Constant dollar Monthly interest, and payment made after interested compounded (if payment is made before interest, then needed payment drops to $597 per month).

Omissions Insurance Property tax Escrow Lenders fees Home improvement costs Moving costs Utilities Income from home if you rent some of it out There are always other unknowns. So, is $216,000 the “wrong” answer? A) yes B) no How could we include these without knowing what they will be?

Error Bars Error Bars are just the value we expect the true value to deviate from our model. The lower the error bar the more accurate our model. What this does is allow us to estimate a range of values we know the “true” answer should fall into.

In Science: There is no “right” or “wrong” answer. There are only answers that are highly accurate, moderately accurate, and not very accurate. Okay, occasionally there is a “crackpot” idea also, but those are rare and usually ignored by most – however….

Science: Is the ongoing work to attempt to understand what we do not know using what we do know. We do this by attempting to best address the “error bars” both known and unknown that we may encounter in order to establish the most accurate set of ideas (otherwise known as “models” or “theories”) that we possibly can.

What is a “theory” a)Some random guess. b)What some scientist thinks the answer should be off the top of his head. c)Some unproven and/or un-provable idea which is the most educated guess someone can make. d)The “model” which most accurately explains what we can observe and find in experiments, and has been proven to be accurate time after time after time.

What is Astronomy used for? With a neighbor, brainstorm as many things that you can think of that Astronomy has been, or could be, used for. Include even historical reasons, and possibly future ones.

Conclusion Science is about using as many facts as possible to take the next step in understanding the unknown. Many “theories” are in fact well thought out and very well proven using as many tests, observations, and experiments we can think of. Astronomy, in addition to being very fun and cool, and having lots of pretty pictures, is a very useful science and will only become more useful as mankind heads into the future.

Questions?