Go outside one night in the next week, and use a toilet paper tube as your viewfinder. Point your viewfinder towards three different constellations in the sky (use your starmap or stellarium to identify them). Look through the viewfinder and count the number of stars you see. Post on your blog in a list
Constellation Name # of Stars I Saw
1.
2.
3.
Now, take an average of those three counts, and multiply by 100. This gives you the number of stars you can see in the sky on an average night.
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How does this work? Well, the average tube is about 11.5 cm long, and about 2.3 cm across. If we calculated the Surface Area of a sphere that was made entirely of toilet paper tubes (4 pi * r^2=1667 cm^2
If we figure each tube is about 2.3 cm across, the Area of the tube is about pi*2.3^2= cm^2=16.7 cm^2. 1667/16.7 = about 100 tubes to view the entire night sky... assuming you have the same type of toilet paper I do.
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So, do you expect everyone in the class to get the same number of stars according to a range of say, +/- 100? Yes or no? Explain your rationale.
Due Date 9/4
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