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Old Astronomy Textbook



Hello,

An former student of mine just gave me a very old astronomy textbook:

"A Textbook of General Astronomy", Charles Young, 1889.


It's pretty interesting to look at, and was thinking of trying to develop
a lesson around it for my intro astronomy or intro physics class. I thought
that the list members would interested in discussing what types of lessons
would be good.

When thinking about the differences between astronomy in 1889 and now, a
couple of things come to mind:

* at that time, it was thought that we were in the center of the
galaxy (which was the entire Universe at that time)

* The Andromeda Galaxy was believed to be a nebula

* There was an understanding of spectroscopy, but no atomic theory

* helium was not discovered, so it is not part of the list of
constituents of the Sun.

I am sure I could think of more, but I'd love to hear what others have to
say.


Brian Blais
Science and Technology Dept.
Bryant College


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bblais@bryant.edu
web.bryant.edu/~bblais