With your project partner, choose a phenomenon to observe, to investigate your guiding question. You will also do library research on your topic.  Do NOT rely on web pages, and DO keep track of your resources so you can reference all the information you use.  Exceptionally ambitious, mathematical, and careful projects may earn upper division science credit (to be determined based on your end-of-quarter presentations and reports). 

Criteria for a good project: 

• originality:  your own observations and explanations in your own words.
• clarity
• coherence (but not completeness - you can't answer all the questions about your phenomenon)
• technical accuracy, in science and in writing

Consider choosing a project which does not require a telescope. There are 4 telescopes available for our use, so time at the eyepiece will be at a premium.  There is really no substitute for careful naked-eye and binocular observation to help you develop an intimate, first-hand understanding of sky phenomena. We will facilitate class observations one night per week, as weather permits. 

Work in teams to share telescope time, rides to dark spots, hot cocoa and blankets. Observing solo can be cold, lonely business.  Bring a thermos, a reclining chair, and a sleeping bag, especially for long sessions such as meteor showers. 

Each partner is expected to do independent, original research. Record your observations in an unlined, bound notebook, as described in class. Record your field notes, sketches, diagrams and charts. Make sense of your observations with the help of appropriate library research. Compare your results with your teammates. Pay special attention to points of disagreement - these can become the nuclei of some of your best learning. Synthesize your observations with your research, and turn in completed material at the end of the quarter. In addition to submitting a carefully referenced Web page, you will also make a short formal presentation to classmates.

Choose one of the projects recommended in our links,or consult with Zita soon to design a project of your own. 

You should undertake two complementary library studies of the phenomenon you observe. 
1. What are the best explanations modern scientists have for the phenomenon? 
2. And how did people from another culture or time understand the same phenomenon? 
What similarities and differences do you find between the two explanations? 
Resist deciding simply that one is "right" and the other is "wrong".  Instead, try your best to see it from the point of view of the culture developing the explanation, considering the resources they have for investigating  it.  For example, why would it make sense for ancient Chinese to say a dragon is swallowing the Sun during an eclipse?  Rather than mere fancy, it is likely to be consistent with the local cosmology, or understanding of the universe, in some interesting ways. Help us see how your culture's interpretation of your phenomenon sheds light on their cosmology. Finally, how do the different explanations help you discern fundamental differences (and similarities) in the two cosmologies? 

Some of the linked candidate projects include notes about connections to early European or Central and South American cultures.  You should do additional research on how another culture understood your research topic.  Start with the Audubon Society guide and our seminar texts, and branch out with library research.  Remember, most web pages are not refereed, so don't believe most of what you read online! 

In addition to our seminar texts, you might check out books by Anthony Aveni,  Michael J. Crowe, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Timothy Ferris, Carl Sagan, and others. 

Use the quantitative reasoning skills you develop in this program to analyze some aspect of your question, using data and/or theory. For example, if you observe the motion of the moons of Jupiter carefully, you can find the period and radius of each orbit. Then you could use Kepler's third law "weigh" Jupiter. Your calculations need not be long and involved, but they must be * relevant to your investigation and * original - based on your own data, gathered from your own observations. 

Since your observations are made over a relatively short period of time, they are unlikely to be perfect and precise, and this is fine. Your calculations will therefore almost certainly deviated from tabulated values. This is a hallmark of honest, original work. You may even discover something nobody else has noticed before. 

You must write in your own words, whether it is a paragraph for seminar or a page for your research report.  After you have gotten a start on thinking, observing, reading, etc., put all your sources away, close your notebooks, and write.  Leave blanks for the detailed information you need to look up.  Go back later and fill in those blanks, and reference your source at the end of your sentence (author, page).  Credit your sources completely at the end of your paper (endnotes, reference list, or footnotes, I don't care which, just be consistent and thorough).

You must proofread and rewrite.  Go through all these steps  for every single writing assignment, long or short: 

• spellcheck
• look up every uncertain word in your dictionary
• read aloud to catch missing words or incomplete sentences
• take it to a writing tutor or a classmate.  Listen to their ideas on how your writing could be clearer.
• Rewrite it.
• Get out your list of Finkel's rules, and check every single one of them.  If you miss one, your work may be returned unread.

You must say something unique and interesting to you, if it is going to be interesting to your reader.  Lists of facts, however erudite, tend to be boring.  For example:  "Jupiter has 74  moons. Io is named for a chicken, Europa is named for a cow, Callisto is named for a musical instrument ...   Io has volcanoes, Europa may have liquid water under its icy surface, Callisto is the source of an iron-rich meteorite... "  So what? Make it matter:
Synthesize your knowledge in your own way.  For example:  "Careful observation of Jupiter's moons can let me weigh the planet!  First I need to find out how far away Jupiter is, then I need to time the moons' orbits.  Surprisingly, it doesn't matter how much each moon weighs, because ..."  Write freely first, and check the accuracy of what you write later (always referencing your sources!)

Rubrics by Washington State Writing Assessment Group 
Avoiding plagiarism       Rools for Writers

• week 1: Brainstorm project ideas in class; review past research projects; find potential members of your research team during  and after class. Start looking at the sky right away, to learn your way around and find out what's visible now.
• week 2: Discuss possible investigations with classmates and in class. Go to the library and browse around your interests. Make a list of the best resources you find, and start reading them. In a couple of weeks, you will summarize each source for your annotated bibliography. Keep looking at the sky and start to narrow in on what you might like to observe most carefully this quarter.
• week 3: Decide what phenomenon you want to observe. Articulate some questions about the phenomenon that you would like to research. Create a WebX discussion in our research folder. Name it for your investigation. Post your team's questions, and a couple of hypotheses for each question. Include each team member's name. Start observing your phenomenonon in earnest: know where to find it, and look at it every clear night, noting any changes.
• week 4: DUE: Research plan. Post your team's research proposal in your WebX Research discussion site. Write up a 2-paragraph draft describing your proposed research project. Include your: 
• Phenomenon you will observe: When and where can you see it? What have you observed so far? How do you propose to observe it for the next month?
• Research question and three hypotheses: Your favorite hypothesis, an alternate hypothesis, and a null hypothesis;
• Annotated bibliography of sources: complete reference for each, and a few sentences summarizing the content, usefulness, level, and reliability of each source;
• Roles of each team member. What strengths does each of you bring? What are your learning goals? What activities will you take responsibility for, to reach your learning goals?
• Links to any electronic resources you are using.

• week 5: You now have a target and a good method for observing it. Keep careful records of all your observations, using a format such as that described in Ferguson. LINK. 

• week 6: Use your text and other resources to find out what kind of quantitative analysis you can do with your observations. This means math. Your measurements are data. How can you use these data to find out something new?
• week 7: You have been observing your target for over a month by now, and have fine-tuned your observing methods. Finish the most important observations this week (and continue observing as you have time and interest). In your report on Friday, summarize your observations. What patterns did you observe? What surprises did you find? What did you learn? Organize your observations, and scan a few of your your sketches, so you will be prepared to present them at the science fair in a couple of weeks. Also summarize key points from your reading, both on 1. modern explanations of your phenomenon and 2. explanations from other cosmologies.
• week 8: Finish your quantitative analysis of your data. What conclusions can you draw from your observations? Uncertainties? Ideas for continued observation and analysis beyond this quarter? Write a FIRST DRAFT of your research report, and take it to the writing center. Your "report" can be in the form of either a PowerPoint presentation (about 15 slides + references), or better, a web page that we can link and "publish" on our program webpage. You will also turn in a final annotated bibliography (on WebX). Be sure to reference absolutely everything taken from other sources, including diagrams. Be sure to use only your own words!
• week 9: DUE: a fine draft of your research report, and your poster for Evergreen's science fair. Also turn in the first draft you took to the writing center, marked up, with the writing tutor's comment sheet. Bring your poster to class to get feedback from classmates and prof. Be prepared to make corrections before you display your poster at the fair. Schedule with your teammates who will stand at the poster for which periods of each day.

• week 10: Finish writing your report and present a nice summary of your team's research to the program. 

Many of the examples in Out of the Classroom, by Dennis W. Dawson, or Introductory Astronomy Excercises, by Dale C. Ferguson, are excellent starting points for research projects.  We will put these on reserve in the library. Skim through these Exercises to see if there is one you'd like to do in depth, to focus your observations and analysis.

How to present your research on a poster

Tips on talks - here are some practices that work well for presentations in class:
* one slide per minute (10 slides for a 10-minute talk)
* more pictures than words
* don't read the words on the screen to us - talk to us
* look at your audience, not your computer.
* tell us the STORY of your research
* speak concisely - avoid long tangents
* what motivates your investigation? question? hypotheses?
* what did you learn? what is our take-home message?