Spectrum Curriculum WG

Members: Arai, Furusho, Handa, Harada, Kakeya, Kawabata, Nagai, and 4 non-JAHOU members (2002, May)

What's New (23 Apr. 2005)

International version of the final product has been released. It is written in English.

Purpose
Copyright and remarks
Product
Overview
History

Purpose

Hands-On Universe (HOU) has released a curriculum on astronomical imaging from basic image processing to finding trangent objects (for example, supernovae and asteroids). Using this curriculum with attached software, you can learn about observational astronomy at your own classroom. After finishing the curriculum, you can join an HOU activity to find a new object.

Although spectroscopy is as important as imaging in astronomy research, there are very few curricula about it. This may be because spectroscopy is believed to be too difficult to learn by highschool students.

To connect this gap JAHOU has started a project to produce a curriculum on astronomical spectroscopy since August 1999. Its basic style is followed as that of the HOU curriculum on astronomical imaging. Through this JAHOU spectrum curriculum,
you can learn on astronomical spectroscopy from experience in daily life to astronomical spectroscopy used in real research works.

Copyright and remarks

Please contact us through e-mail (spectra @ jahou.org), when you want to use our curriculum. This curriculum may not be ready to use for you. You may try to improve it before using your classroom. Please let us know when you have any questions and comments to improve the contents.

We also recommend to contact HOU members in your country. In some country, a version translated in your own language may have already been prepared. HOU members live in Australia, China, France, German, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Senegal, Sweden, UK, US, and many other countries (alphabetical order). Please visit web page of Hands-On Universe in detail about HOU.

As shown in the Teachers' Note, the international version should be customized to your own situation to get better reaction of you students. We hope that a customized version for you own environment is exchanged in global HOU members. When you make your customized version, please let us know.

Product

You can download our curriculum from the following link ancker, although all copyrights are reserved by JAHOU and its members. After download it, please read all of the contents from cover to cover.

Workbook Ver. 1(12 Apr. 2005) PDF
Teachers Notes Ver.1(12 Apr. 2005) PDF

Overview

Many people believe that spectroscopy can be understood only by few people. On the other hand, spectroscopy is basic concept to understand results of modern astronomy and astrophysics.

Therefore, we have made this curriculum. We assumed that it is used at school, science museum, and other activities on modern astronomy.

Two major points of our curriculum is;

Through our curriculum you can learn all basic concepts used in astronomical spectroscopy.
You can use only a part of our curriculum, when you have already known about concepts introduced in the other parts.

Our curriculum is composed by two books; a Workbook and a Teacher's Note. The workbook is for your student. Your student read it and answer the questions. The teacher's note is for a teacher. Many hints to use the curriculum and actual purposes of the questions are written in it.