Poster on the historical evalution of transit of venus (July 2012)

Expeditions as concept of education in extrascholar youth work Institut für Physik und Physikdidaktik Fördergemeinschaft für naturwissenschaftliche Jugendarbeit e. V. Institut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaft Susanne M Hoffmann ✩ ✬ ✩ ✬ Motivation Introduction On three locations our youngsters observed the transit of venus: Tromsoe (Norway), Krasnoyarsk (Siberia) and in Germany. ✫ ✪ ✫ ✬ In extra scholar youth work pupils and students of different age and different cultural background work together. They learn together by outdoor experiments, doing sports and having fun in role plays. Therefore they experience the international character of science and prepair for scientific studies and jobs. The Astronomical Unit from Transits of Venus Edmond Halley (1656 – 1742): ✪ ✩ Joseph-Nicolas Delisle (1688 – 1768) the length of the path and so the duration of the transit differs on different places on earth requirements: observational places with different geographical latitude requirements: observational places with different geographical length evaluation task: compare the contact times directly to determine the parallax of venus in evaluation task: compare the difference in the duration of the transit to determine the parallax α of venus in front of the solar disk front of the solar disk measurement task: contact times measurement task: contact times advantage: method works, if only one of the four contact times is observable, as long as it but: need of good weather for at least a pair of 1st or 2nd and 3rd or 4th contact is the same on two places advantage: large effect, easily measurable (in case of good conditions) independed of small instabilities of the weather but: smaller effect Didactical Result teacher students learn: practical astronomy, how to get valuable measurements with simple means like historical expeditions had and even bad equiped modern schools might have practise: guide a group, work with pupils pupils learn: practical astronomy: historical methods of observation and modern evaluation practise: learn together with their ”teachers”, following the educational ideal of Humboldt worth of international cooperation: it is impossible to get a result with one (own) single observation Educational Results • compare the data of our two expeditions and observers at home Delisle’s method Halley’s method • Evaluation method of Johann Franz Encke (1822) compare historical data least quare fit (get correct error bars) First estimate (with distance of venus from a sun spot): The astronomical unit with Halley’s method from our data is 70 million km (deviation to modern radar measurement from space is factor 2) – [Encke: 156 million km]. ✫ ✬ Outlook ✩ • Workshops with pupils and students in September ✫ References ✩ Halley, Phil. Transact. 1691 and 1716 Encke, Gotha 1822 and 1824, Akademie der Wiss. Berlin 1835 • Test of the education method with three pupils in context of special research projects (Jugend Forscht) • evaluation of the pupil’s and student’s experiences ✬ ✪ ✪ Thomas, Alexander: Langzeitwirkungen der Teilnahme an internationalen Jugendbegegnungen auf die Persönlichkeitsentwicklung der TeilnehmerInnen, Regensburg 2005 ✫ ✪