Cuesta College :: Astronomy 210 :: Spring 2020

"A Private Universe" transcript (*.html)

Narrator: Despite a lifetime of the very best education, students in our classrooms are failing to learn science. Many of these students will graduate from college with the same scientific misconceptions that they had on entering grade school. To test how a lifetime of education affects our understanding of science we asked these graduates some simple questions in astronomy. Consider for example that the causes of the seasons is a topic taught in every standard curriculum.

Graduate 1: O.K. I think the seasons happen because as...Earth travels around the sun, it gets nearer to the sun, which produces warmer weather and gets farther away which produces colder weather. And thus the seasons.

Graduate 2: How cold it is or how warm it is in any given time of the year has to do with the closeness of...Earth to the sun during the seasonal periods.

Graduate 3: ...Earth travels around the sun, and it gets hotter when are closer to the sun, and it gets colder when we are farther away.

Narrator: These graduates, like many of us, think of...Earth's orbit as a highly exaggerated ellipse, even though...Earth's orbit is very nearly circular, with distance producing virtually no effect on the seasons. We carry with us the strong, incorrect belief that changing distance is responsible for the seasons...

[Adapted from Fernando D�az del Castillo]
http://www.scribd.com/doc/269350/A-Private-Universe