Students see that light and heavy objects fall at the same rate, as established experimentally by Galileo. They see that falling objects, and balls rolling down an incline, tend to accelerate at a constant rate a. Their velocity...

Students engage in an overview of the story of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, and of Kepler's laws. Each of Kepler's laws be studied separately in more detail in later lessons. They examine Kepler's 3rd law.

Students engage in a historical review, starting with the existence of the horizon at sea, proceeding to various studies of the Earth's size and shape, and leading to the attempt by Columbus to reach India by sailing westward.

Students gain an understanding of Kepler's 2nd law--that planets (and satellites) move fastest at their closest approach to the center of attraction, and slow down when far away. They explore the concepts of "potential energy" and...

Young scholars explain that planets actually orbit the center of gravity of the solar system, and that distant planets may be detected by motions of their central star around the centers of gravity of their planetary systems.

High schoolers become acquainted with linear graphs, the parabola and the rectangular hyperbola. Also prepare tables of paired values as preparation for plotting a line. They study the cartesian equation of an ellipse, with a worked...

Students examine total eclipses of the Sun and their limited regions of totality. They explain that this limited view occurs because the Moon is close enough to us for different points on Earth to view it differently.

Learners discover how Aristarchus, a Greek astronomer around 230 BC, used a simple observation of the eclipse of the Moon, plus clever reasoning, to deduce the distance of the Moon. They practice the same calculation technique.

Students discover how astronomers used the diameter of the Earth's orbit around the Sun as a baseline for estimating the distance of some stars, and the meaning of "Parsec" and "light year."