Week 8

The big question addressed in the lab, and a description of what you did.

This week in the lab we had presentations about different parts of the universe. First we learned about the origin of the universe. The universe is 13.8 billion years old. Then we learned about life cycles of stars. A cool fact about stars was that the bigger a star is the shorter its lifespan. Then we moved onto learning about galaxies. We learned that there are three types of galaxies, spiral, elliptical, and irregular. We also learned about the origin of the earth. We learned that the earth has many layers including the crust, the mantle, and the core. Black holes was the next topic we learned about. Black holes are formed when a star is at the end of its lifespan. Lastly we learned about the exploration of space. I thought that it was interesting to hear that women should have the ones going to space for many different reasons but we used to not be allowed.

A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture. 

During lecture we learned about the life cycle of stars. Stars are born from the nebula. Stars can make up to Iron on the periodic table. We also learned about the origin of the earth. I learned that the Earth was not formed from the big bang but instead was made from dust and debris. There are more galaxies than we can even imagine. We also learned about Katie Bouman who was the first first to be able to get a picture of a black hole. We also covered the space race and everything that went into getting a man to land on the moon. 

Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading:

What did you learn?

In this chapter we learned all about the sun, earth and moon. There were two different theories about the earth's orbit. One being the geocentric theory, which was the theory that earth is at the center of the solar system and everything goes around us. Then there was the heliocentric theory, which says that the sun is at the center and we go around the sun. We know that the heliocentric theory is correct. We learned that there are eight phases of the moon: new moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, third quarter, and waning crescent. The textbook also taught us about the different eclipses that we see. In a solar eclipse the sun is being blocked and in a lunar eclipse the moon is being blocked. 

What was most helpful?

I thought all of the videos and images were very helpful when reading the textbook. I need to see a picture to be able to understand all the different information so it was nice to have different visuals to look at. 

What do you need more information on?

I think this chapter of the textbook did a great job covering everything that I was still unsure about. 

What questions/concerns/comments do you have?

Nothing 


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