Cosmology courses on the central coast

[darkuniverse]

Hi there. My names is Estelle Asmodelle and I am an honors student in Astronomy with a background in physics and mathematics. I am hosting two Cosmology Modules at the Community College at the Ourimbah campus of Newcastle University. The first module is running now and will be repeated next in the second term:

“OUR UNIVERSE – An introduction”
Explore the history of Cosmology, the work of great minds from Copernicus to Einstein, and current scientific theories of our universe. Let’s discover how humans' perception of the universe have changed and current scientific theories that prevail. From quantum theory to relativity, unified theories and string theories – What does the future hold?
http://cccc.nsw.edu.au/course/OUU (http://cccc.nsw.edu.au/course/OUU)

In the second term a more advanced course with maths goes deeper:

“OUR UNIVERSE – In Depth”
Starting with Newton, and then Exploring Einstein’s Special and General theories of Relativity, introductory maths will describe the expanding and accelerating universe. We will also define the spacetime metric, and look at the scale factor and the horizon problem, making correlations with sub-atom physics and Quantum Mechanics. Further gravitational sheering and lensing will also be explored. The pre-requisite for this course is “Our Universe – An Introduction”.

You can also learn more about me and my publications here:
http://www.relativecosmos.com/wordpress/?page_id=1500

[bojan]

Hi Elle,
Sounds excellent :thumbsup:
It is a pity the courses are not online.. like recent Dr Plesser's course (Duke university) offered via Coursera.org..
Do you plan such a thing in a future? I would be very interested...

[darkuniverse]

Hi there,

I do plan on eventually preparing video presentations of my courses but at the moment I am still refining them - possibly next year.

I do think Coursera.org is a great resource and I would recommend anyone to enrol there.

One of the main aspects of the actual courses I run is the discussion and question time - an emphasis is placed on this aspect of the class - with 40 minutes devoted to students expressing their conception of the work we have covered and questions that result. Its sometimes difficult to get concepts with online material.

But when I do put the courses on line - I will post a notice here.

Thanks for asking!

Regards
Estelle

[sjastro]

I can imagine from the role of the educator there must be some challenges in producing a meaningful account of General Relativity and Cosmology based on an elementary level of mathematics.

Regards

Steven

[darkuniverse]

Hi there,

As you know the Special Theory of Relativity is fairly easy to explain with elementary algebra. However, the General Theory of Relativity is not the case, and so in the first module "OUR UNIVERSE - An Introduction," simply concepts of GR are provided, while in "OUR UNIVERSE - In Depth," general concepts in differential geometry are described, but we don't go into tensor calculus, but instead - as is the case in cosmology today - we generalize to a flat space-time with the Robertson–Walker metric.

However, as there is nothing like this available on the central coast, I've been asked to consider adding a third module, "OUR UNIVERSE - Advanced" - which is currently not scheduled. This module would evaluate the Tensors and also look in more detail at both the de Sitter and Friedman solutions. I really hope this course runs one day, but as I told the college administrator, the environment would have to be in a university setting as most people would need the maths skills to follow the course. Alas, its unlikely such a module would run, unless I am very surprised.

I would dearly love to teach such a module as my passion apart from cosmology is the General theory of Relativity - but I may have wait until I have my PhD and find a suitable place for it.

But thanks for asking...

I see by your avatar you are a maths fan. Its good so see I am not alone :-)

Warmest Regards
Estelle

[madbadgalaxyman]

Estelle,

I note that you are new to IIS.
Welcome!!

It would be a good thing if you could contribute some posts at IIS, as we could all benefit from your mathematical/physical knowledge in our online discussions. We seem to have a few other 'physics types' who contribute to the IIS science forum, so you may find some interesting comments by others.

In general, the IIS science forum (= "Astronomy and Amateur Science"), though occasionally lacking in enough contributors, is the best venue for serious discussions about astronomy and astrophysics; contributions to the other IIS forums often get lost in the confusion of too many very short posts and too much trivia.
(I have written quite a few in depth posts for the science forum; while I often get only a few replies, these posts still get viewed by several hundred interested people)

I found your work and educational background to be interesting;
those articles you have written are very explanatory, and I just downloaded the ones on the Special Theory and General Theory.

cheers,
Robert

[darkuniverse]

Dear Robert,

Thanks for the welcome message - I did register on IceInSpace in 2010 but never posted. Simply wanted too but time is a rare commodity in my life.

I will try to check out the section in the forum you mentioned and again if time permits I would be happy to contribute.

For those who wish to download any of the papers I've published in the Journal of the Institute for Science and Technology, please do so at the Academia link here:

http://uclan.academia.edu/EstelleAsmodelle

There is one on the Special Theory of Relativity and one of the General Theory of Relativity, as well as a recent one on GAIA (which will be published in the next edition of the Journal. There are a couple of others as well. More to come.

Meanwhile I will certainly drop by the forums periodically.

Warmest Regards
Estelle

[madbadgalaxyman]

Estelle,

You are quite obviously very good at communicating scientific concepts in clear and concise and interesting prose, so any contributions to IIS would be most welcome.

It would be very valuable to IIS members if you posted, in the science forum, a link to your excellent Relativity and Cosmology and Astronomy webpage.

Here is a very opinionated perspective on IIS, from an active member (from 'yours truly' = mad galaxy man), so you can get some idea as to how IIS might fit in with your other activities:

- generally, threads are kept on topic, though there is some unobtrusive moderation, and the moderators are fairly tolerant of the fact that some of the posts also serve a social function

- not too many trolls. There is the usual mixture of personalities for a group of amateur astronomers, but the 'personality' element is kept very subdued.

- For the most part, IIS is a mirror of the general amateur astronomical community, which implies that the members are happy just to endlessly discuss their astronomical interests (not a whole lot of 'personal' stuff in IIS fora, though some minor social chit chat does go on).

- nearly all of the IIS members include in their C.V. a strong amateur astronomical background; which implies an intensive knowledge of and enthusiasm for things like optics, telescopes, the night sky, observational astronomy (mainly: Visual Deep Sky, and astrophotography). Some of us have substantial knowledge of physics&maths and/or astrophysics and/or theoretical astronomy, but this is a definite minority.

- some of our members are very eminent in their own areas of specialty; e.g. Ken Crawford has a citation record relating to his use of advanced imaging techniques to detect tidal streams around galaxies, and the BOSS collaboration members recently got a citation record for a paper about SNe. The telescope-making forum includes a number of people who have professional-level skills in optical fabrication. While some of these people are classed as 'amateurs', the brilliance of their work speaks for itself!

- In the Imaging Forum, some of the amateur H-alpha and narrowband imaging of HII regions & PNe is absolutely 'state-of-the-art (better even than the Ha surveys done by professional astronomers!!), and some of the galaxy images are good enough to show novel morphology which is crying out for some analysis.

- the overall impact of a particular thread that is generated by one of the IIS members is modest; a few hundred people might read about it. However, IIS is a wonderful way to find out about what is going on in the amateur astronomical community.

Best regards,
madbadgalaxyman

[sjastro]

Estelle,

Very impressive web site.
How did you score an interview with Lawrence Krauss?

I saw Krauss on Q&A the other night, the intellectual contrast with Fred Nile was profound.;)

Regards

Steven

[GeoffW1]

Robert,

Well summed up.

Cheers