2007-03-13

Akamai Observatory Short Course
Notes from First Teleconference Meeting

Present       Absent 
 David LeM.    Mike M.
 Emily R.
 Sarah A.
 Steve R.

1. Video/Tele-conference Logistics
   We all finally connected by phone. For future meetings David will
   check that we have an unoccupied telecon room number. The main
   number will stay the same (1-888-387-8686).
   Video conferencing may be possible (we all have videocon sites),
   but it was not trivial to setup. We will only go to video if
   necessary. 

2. AOSC Timeline Update (David and Sarah)
   The 2006 AOSC week-long timeline is posted on the twiki
   Most of it will stay the same
   Suggested changes:
        - Move the inquiry starters to earlier on monday to help break
	  up the series of talks 
	- The monday investigation session is 3 hours long, and the
	  tuesday session is 1 hour. We will put in a 'Thinking Tool'
	  segment after two hours of investigation on monday. Then
	  the students will have another hour in which to apply the
	  thinking tool before the end of the day, and the monday
	  session will have a built-in break.

3. Starters and Investigation Divisions:
   SR: Do we want to remove lenses from the inquiry?
   ER: The tabletop 2d lenses (used with ray boxes to show the path of
       light) are good tools. Would like to do that with
       mirrors. Understanding similarities/diffs between lenses and
       mirrors could be a content goal for advanced students.
   SA: The range of prior knowledge will be large. some students will
       have no optics experience. Others will be more advanced.

   Consensus: We won't do a lens-based starter (we'll stick to
   pinholes and mirrors) but we'll have lenses available for the
   investigations. 

   DLM: For the content goal of understanding an aperture as a sum of
   pinholes, we can use a "reflecting pihole," i.e. a flat mirror with
   a pinhole mask. (see the powerpoint slideshow)
   This could reach a high-tier goal of understanding the law of
   reflection. 


   Starter Idea         Targeted Content Goals      Materials Needed
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   Corner Cube Mirror   LTISL,Law of Refl.	    Corn. Cube Mirrors
   Reflecting Pinhole	LTISL,Law of Refl.	    flat mirrors,pinhole masks
   Deformable Mirror	LTISL,converging/diverging  deformable mirror
			light paths,Law of Refl.
   Camera Obscura	LTISL,			    cam.obsc.


   LTISL = "Light travels in straight lines"

   Deformable Mirror : thin sheet of reflective metal that can be
   bent, twisted and reshaped. 

   Camera Obscura : "shoe-box" with pinhole aperture and thin screen
   for image projection(?). (Sarah has put these together in the past.)
   Starter could use different pinhole sizes to get different image
   sharpness. 

   
4. Tasks before next meeting
   
   next meeting date/time will be discussed by e-mail

   we will follow David's model for discussing starters and
   investigation paths:  put together a simple powerpoint that
   demonstrates the concept before the meeting.  This gives everyone
   something to look at, and it builds towards the synthesis
   presentations to be done at the AOSC.

   start looking for needed materials:
     deformable mirrors
     2D tabletop "ray-diagram" mirrors
     camera obscura / pinhole cameras     
     reflecting pinholes
     corner cube mirrors

   choose who leads which starters (and who is responsible for
   securing materials)

   set agenda items for next meeting