Copernican Revolution 1.0

This page contains curricular materials that I have developed for a course on the Copernican Revolution. The course is intended to satisfy a science requirement for non-science majors. The course explores the historical development of astronomy from the Ancient Greeks to Isaac Newton. The main purpose of the course is to use early modern astronomy as an example for illustrating how scientific theories are developed and tested and how scientific knowledge changes over time.<br /><br />I teach the course using interactive methods. Students work in small groups to complete worksheet-based activities. Most of the activities involve using computer simulations. Some of the activities make use of commercial planetarium software (Starry Night Enthusiast 6.2). It is possible that an open-source planetarium program (like Stellarium or Celestia) could be used instead, but I haven't tried it. The remaining activities use computer simulations that I have created using the Easy Java Simulations (EJS) package. These simulations are part of the Open-Source Physics (OSP) project and are available for free using the links below, along with all of the worksheets for the activities. Interested faculty may also be able to get a pre-publication version of a textbook for this course.

Requirements:	No special requirements
Platforms:	Mac, Mac OSX
Keyword:	Activities,  Astronomy,  Celestia,  Commercial,  Computer,  Developed,  Haven,  Night,  Planetarium,  Program,  Scientific,  Simulations,  Software,  Starry,  Stellarium
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