Astrophysics Report
A while back, I posted a request for coteachers for an astrophysics class that I was planning to teach this spring at HSSP. The class is now done, and it was a great success. Not perfect --- there are definitely changes that I would make --- but the students were able to recreate deep astrophysical results on their own, sorting through data and doing the science. It culminated in a series of deductions where they graphed the distance of galaxies vs. their recessional velocity (from redshift), and managed to get to the theory of the expansion of the universe. One of the things that this class was intended to do was to transmit how science is really done, and I think it was shockingly successful. I think the students really got an idea for how you piece together ideas, for how theories become confirmed by experimental data. I really think that we were able to demonstrate how scientific theories develop. Rather than throwing a bunch of facts at them, I think they see astronomy and astrophysics as an organic whole, where you bootstrap out from early theories and observations to grander ones.

Basically, I am supremely happy with this class. Yes, there's lots more that we could have done, but it seems to have come out really wonderfully.