Telescope Technology for Teachers AAS 197, January 2001 Session 87.
Innovative telescopes require innovative activities to explore their uniqueness.
Students explore basic optics using small flat mirrors before building a human model of the primary mirror. With both the human model and basic optics principles, they discover the need for a tracker to follow a star across the sky throughout an observation as Earth rotates beneath the stationary telescope. These activities are posed as a series of challenges to the student. An addition activity on using optic fiber describes how light is transferred to the astronomical instruments. These activities, which are aligned with the National Science Education Standards, have been piloted at several teacher workshops.