Eric Fort wrote:
> Somewhat depends upon the intended audience
Undergraduate physics/astronomy students.
> but the following items come to mind
Great list! Thanks.
> and I'll finish with 2 references from which to pick more.
I don't think I saw these. Would welcome references of all sorts!
> The props chosen might also depend somewhat at to what "the presented
> philosophy of what time is" is.
I doubt I need to belabor my philosophy here :-) Abstract is:
http://astro4.ast.villanova.edu/aprsa/?q=node/38
Will talk about the meaning of the word "synodic". Also issues from the 2nd
edition of Dave Mills' book, "Computer Network Time Synchronization: The
Network Time Protocol on Earth and in Space", e.g.,
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ipin.html
> Various calendars (Myan, Hebrew, Julian, Gregorian, etc. illustrating their
> significance
Does anybody know of a web page or app that compares several calendars?
Perhaps some sort of game/puzzle?
> Telescope/transit/sextant - translate where you are to when it is.
The department has a Wild T-4 theodolite. As an aside, when I visited Danny
Hillis at Applied Minds, a Wild T-4 was the first thing I saw upon walking into
his office. I may have been his first visitor to exclaim, "I've used one of
those!"
> marine chronometer
This was my alma mater and we learned about Harrison's clocks in our history of
astronomy course. I have no idea what they teach them these days :-)
Tony Finch wrote:
> And you should mention Noether's Theorem, which says that conservation of
> momentum and energy are a consequence of this invariant.
Sean Carroll was a student a few years after I graduated. I think I'll refrain
from poaching on his philosophy :-)
Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> Next pull out your HP5370B, tell them what it does, show them how to read the
> display, demonstrate it with two switches which you press in rapid order.
> Attach two scope-probes, measure the speed of light along a foot
> of the wire.
> ...
> The reason this is such a dramatic demonstration, is that people hear about
> speed of light only in context of imense distances: plants, spaceships or
> fibre-optics around the globe.
Excellent idea! This is surely possible locally and I'll see about borrowing
the setup if I give the talk again. Light-time corrections are
bread-and-butter for the variable star work they do at Villanova, but I'm not
eager to carry electronics on the airplane.
Rob
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