2nd Annual Astronomy Night: ASTR 111 Students Take Over the Science Center for a Night of Public Engagement

As a part of my quest for alternative assessments in all of my classes, last Friday we held the second annual Amherst College “Astronomy Night” in which the students in my general education course ASTR 111 “Exploring the Cosmos” divided into small groups and designed an outreach activity to teach some aspect of the course content. They start by giving their activity a snazzy name, like the ones below.

Several hundred people, including children of a range of ages, came to the science center to experience these activities thanks to the excellent advertising and organizational work of my colleagues in the Center for Community Engagement. As was true last year, I was SUPER impressed with how thoughtful and creative the ASTR111 students were in designing their activities to teach about stellar structure, stellar evolution, the properties of light, parallax, the doppler effect, spectroscopy, and much more!

Visitors and activity leaders alike learned a ton, and had fun doing it too.