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Re: [Phys-L] planetary alignment



This of course should be something that can be easily figured using some
proportional reasoning. So it would be a problem that HS students "should"
be able to figure out. There was a HS math course called modeling which
really helped students to figure things on their own, but in the school I
taught in, it was dropped in favor of more "rigorous" courses. I am pretty
sure that at the end of that course most students could figure the alignment
problem fairly easily.

A slightly more difficult assignment is to figure out how long it is between
3 planetary alignments for say Earth, Mars, and Jupiter. Of course there is
really no exact exact solution except for specific combinations of periods.
But this can be figured fairly easily.

It certainly is sometimes easier to look up formulae, but students need to
be able to create them. That is still something that computers can not yet
do in general.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX