Re: C8 donation

On 29 Sep, 15:50, Rich <rander3...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 28, 11:25 pm, "Dennis Woos" <dpw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I donated my old orange Celestron-8 to my son's high school today! My son's
physics teacher is a good guy and i think the scope will be well taken
care
of...

I am not saying that your donation was a bad idea, as I have no info about
this specific school/teacher. However, I always discourage folks from
donating scopes to our local schools. The teachers don't know how to use a
scope, and so it ends up stuck in a storage closet. I suggest that the
equipment is instead donated to a club or an individual who will use it at
public events, where the students will actually get a chance to see/learn
something.

Dennis

Given the emphasis on junk science in schools today (other than
probably lecturing students on the "value" of the U.S. joining Kyoto,http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Kyoto_Count_Up.htm) they've
probably displaced many of their science programs with "social
science" and other intellectually-lax disciplines. Maybe they can use
the C8 to observe the poor and border-crossing aliens and find out why
the current administration should be replaced with a socialist one to
solve the World's problems? Our local science centre, where students
used to be introduced to the REAL sciences at a young age, was taken
over by left wing cranks who have turned this publically-funded
institution into a socialist theory tank, dealing only with sociology,
ecology and promotion of global wealth redistribution, otherwise known
as "global warming theory." It's about indoctrination, not education.


You all want astronomy to be a magnification exercise and that is why
nobody is interested in astronomy.Show students how Copernicus
reasoned that Venus and Mercury moved faster than the Earth in an
inner orbital circuit and they will enjoy it.There are excellent
images which shows how it happens as Venus overtakes the slower moving
Earth with the central Sun as a backdrop -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thBSDf4Ers4

Once they understand the context that the Earth is orbitally moving
slower than Venus and we see this directly,then they can move on to
the more elaborate but equally appealing view of the outer planets.

Of course,it means making the effort to grasp that we are moving as
well as the other planets as an actual experience rather than
resorting to illustrated representations.

.