Instructor:
Office hour: Wed 11-12 or by appointment (or luck).
Important: I am on campus only on Wed & Fri, don't try to find me on other days, you shall fail.
Course info and resources
We live in a vast stellar "island" that we call the Milky Way galaxy in a largely empty universe. As we survey the stellar and interstellar components of the Milky Way - the distribution and motions of stars and interstellar gas, and how these dynamic, ever-changing components interact with each other during their life cycles inside the Milky Way - we will follow the path of ancient astronomers, wonder at their mistakes and prejudices, and form our own understanding.
There are (in truth) no prerequisites for this class, all pieces of
physics that we need we will figure out by ourselves.
Schedule of lectures
(my notes for each lecture will be linked on that page).
Class calendar
The textbook etc
- Unfortunately, there is no single source that covers this subject in full. My notes serve as a primary, albeit very terse, source of information.
- As an optional textbook, you can use a nice book by Timothy Ferris: Coming of Age in the Milky Way, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2003 (you can get it on Amazon), but it only covers about 1/3 of what I am going to talk about.
- For the astronomical and physical information, any introductory-level Astronomy textbook will do. There are also course websites from other instructors that offer complete textbooks:
- In preparing my notes, I discovered that Wikipedia is a wonderful resource. In fact, I would strongly recommend everyone read the appropriate Wikipedia article after each class.
- The last 6 lectures will contain some material that is not well represented in any textbook or other source (except the original research papers). So, you will benefit by attending these lectures and taking a careful look at my slides.
We will also use other web-based material as needed (I will keep adding links here).
Grading policy
The final grade of the course will be determined according to the
following rule:
- In-class projects (12): 60%
- Practice exam(1): optional, 20%
- Final exam(1): 40% without a practice exam, 20% with a practice exam
There will be actually 15 projects in this class, but I will count only 12 with the highest scores. So, you can miss 3 projects (20%) with no penalty, and you do not need to give me any explanation or reason. Or you can take all 15 and then you will not have to worry about a low score on that bad day you had a headache.
Exams will consist of short word problems similar to projects, but easier. However, since projects are group efforts, they do not really prepare you for the exam. Thus, as a preparation, I am offering an optional "practice" exam. The reasons to take it are (a) to see what a final will look like and (b) if your final score is lower than your practice exam score, the practice exam will count toward your grade and the lower score final will only contribute 20% of your grade. Hence, if you do really well on the practice exam, your effort will not be wasted. But it is truly optional, so if you decide not to take it or if your score on the practice exam is lower than your final score, it will not count.
Projects
Projects will be completed in class. I will ask you to split into groups of
2 to 4 and work on projects jointly. Because of this joint nature of projects, they can not be made up, but don't forget, you can miss 3 with no penalty.
Project rules:
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In order to accommodate latecomers (who may be late for good reasons), we will start projects not right at the beginning of the class, but 5 mins later, at 1:35. I will be starting classes with a review of the previous lecture, and may even start and later interrupt the lecture for that day for the project.
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If you come after the project has started (i.e. after 1:35), you will not be allowed to join any existing group, this will not be fair to the students who already will have put some effort into the project. If you are late, you will have 2 options: either do the project alone (or with any other latecomer who may come at the same time as you) or not do it at all - remember, you can skip 3 projects with no penalty, only 12 out of 15 projects will count towards your grade.
Key lectures
Two lectures: Nov 15 and Dec 6 are the key to the whole class: the first covers how the Milky Way galaxy functions as a "body", and the second one covers its "life" story from birth to (something one may call) death. I highly recommend that you plan on attending both of these classes, the material I will present is not readily available in any textbook, and a significant part of the final exam will be based on these two lectures.
Exams
Fairness and Equality
I commit to treating everyone fairly and equally. Please, do not ask me for extra credit, preferential treatment, or other exceptions, like raising your grade because you believe that you deserve more. I will not change any grade on request, only if you convince me that my grading was inaccurate. If you think I behave unfairly, please bring it up, but whatever action I take to remedy my shortcomings must apply equally to all students.
Academic Dishonesty
I taught this class many times and I can say with confidence - you folks are great. Every time I am impressed with the integrity and maturity of Chicago students. Unfortunately, as the British say, "Every village has a fool". I did encounter cases of academic dishonesty in the past, so I explicitly ask you not to engage in it in this class. I treat cheating as a personal insult and retain the right to fail students involved even in seemingly minor cheating.
The most common infringement in the past was students adding their absent friends to project submissions. Please do not do that, it is cheating. I count the students present, and if I notice a mismatch between the number of students present and the number of names on the project submissions, I will have to start taking attendance. You are grown-ups and I commit to treating you as grown-ups, so please behave as ones.
Concerning Grading
The Physical Sciences Division now has a uniform grading policy. Their grading recommendations for instructors state:
"Although it is up to instructors to decide on grade distributions, we offer the following general guidelines on grading. These classes do not serve as a screening device for higher level classes, so we think that the vast majority of students who take these classes should be able to earn at least a B- if they work hard. However, A's should indicate a higher level of accomplishment than a typical student. Thus, we consider a reasonable grade distribution for these classes to be 1/3 A's, 10% C's or lower (including W's) and the rest B's."
I will adhere to this policy with one exception: I will never curve your grade down, all curving will be up only (i.e. curving will never decrease your grade, it can only increase it).
Good luck!
