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Re: Private Universe and the Seasons



At 3:13 PM -0500 9/19/03, Frohne, Vickie wrote:
When I taught astronomy, I found that many students could NOT
understand the diagrams in the book.... They just
couldn't interpret the book illustrations. Besides, it's hard to understand
this when looking at a static page. There are some astonomy Java applets on
the Web, as well as planetarium software, that let students play around with
animations. These work somewhat better than static diagrams, but students
still can't "see" the concept until they work with 3-D models.

It might help to take your globe pencil sharpener and a beach ball,
figure out how far apart they should be according to the scale of the solar
system (based on the globe), set 'em up outside, and THEN point the axis of
the globe toward or away from the "Sun".

I agree with everything you say; I, too, use 3D models. I, too, use the
animated applets, etc. But are you furthermore saying that 2-D diagrams
must necessarily fail and we shouldn't even _have_ them in the books? Can
we make (2D) diagrams enough better than current ones to where they'd help
rather than hinder? Is it possible to make diagrams good enough so someone
could learn this concept from a book on their own?

Larry