HR: 1330h
AN: ED13B-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Teaching Solar and Space Physics to Undergraduates at Boston University
AU: * Spence, H E
EM: spence@bu.edu
AF: Boston University Department of Astronomy, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 United States
AU: Hughes, W J
EM: hughes@bu.edu
AF: Boston University Department of Astronomy, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 United States
AB: The Department of Astronomy at Boston University offers a one-semester advanced undergraduate course entitled Solar and Space Physics (AS414). The course is open to students who have completed two years of college physics or who have seen equivalent material by studying engineering. The course is taken primarily by students majoring in physics or astronomy and by engineering students who can use it to fulfill a technical elective. The course treats the usual topics covered in an introductory space physics course: the sun, the solar wind, planetary atmospheres, ionospheres and magnetospheres, informed by discussions of particle motion and simple plasma physics. The course has benefited from methodologies introduced from the CISM Space Weather Summer School, which is aimed at beginning graduate students. In particular the course ends with the students interpreting real Sun-to-Earth data from a space weather event.
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0825 Teaching methods
DE: 0840 Evaluation and assessment
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly