Modeling the History of Astronomy: Ptolemy, Copernicus and Tycho

TL;DR

This paper presents educational activities that help students understand historical astronomical models by using open source software to connect observational data with Ptolemaic, Copernican, and Tychonic theories.

Contribution

It introduces a hands-on teaching approach that integrates software tools and observational data to teach the history and fundamentals of planetary models.

Findings

Students can accurately model a fictitious solar system.

Students learn key vocabulary and concepts of historical models.

The activities enhance understanding of observational astronomy.

Abstract

This paper describes a series of activities in which students investigate and use the Ptolemaic, Copernican, and Tychonic models of planetary motion. The activities guide students through using open source software to discover important observational facts, learn the necessary vocabulary, understand the fundamental properties of different theoretical models, and relate the theoretical models to observational data. After completing these activities students can make observations of a fictitious solar system and use those observations to construct models for that system.