Teaching Astronomy by Doing Astronomy

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, University of Basque Country/JHU

By Stacy Palen

I was poking around, looking for something completely different when I came across this nice little vignette from "Physics Today" published in 2006¹. It’s the story of the discovery of dark matter, told by Vera Rubin herself.

The story is mostly accessible to introductory students, with only a little bit of stretch required in the single paragraph that describes circular velocities and flat rotation curves. Hilariously, she includes an "exercise for the reader.” (Well—hilarious to me, and probably you, but students won’t get it.)

If your students have already learned about galaxy rotation curves, they will be able to follow the paragraph. If not, it’s fine if they skim over it—they won’t lose the plot.

The descriptions of observing at the telescope, and the trouble of moving the spectrograph from one location to another really gives a nice feel for how hard it was to get this done the first time.

I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with this story in my classes yet, but I found it charming, and think it will capture the interest of some of my students who struggle to connect to this material. I’ll at least share it with them through the LMS so that students who are interested can read it.

If you come up with a plan to use it, tell me about it in the comments!

1 Unfortunately, the biographical information published with the article is out of date. Vera Rubin passed away at the end of 2016.