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SAAO Cape Town Open Night
September 28 @ 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
The SAAO Open Nights in Cape Town take place on the second and fourth Saturday of every month.
All Open Nights will start with a presentation on topics of astronomy or related science fields. Visitors will then be given an introduction to the history of the observatory, library, museum, and the 120 year-old McClean telescope. If the weather permits, stargazing will take place with McClean and smaller telescopes.
Please email cptbookings@saao.ac.za or call +27 21 447 0025 if you have any queries regarding bookings.
Speaker: Chad Leukes
Chad Leukes is a full-time PhD candidate (Astronomy) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He lectures Introductory Mechanics for the UCT Physics Department and is the National Astrophysics and Space Science (NASSP) tutor co-ordinator at the UCT-node. Chad specializes in Astronomy Education Research and has a keen interest in understanding how students reason about astronomical concepts and phenomena.
Abstract:
What is Astronomy? Why is Astronomy important? How has it changed the world? And how has it impacted YOU? In this talk I will answer these questions, and more. As an astronomy education researcher, I will also give an overview of my research, which aims at understanding how students reason when engaging with astronomy. I will present details of an instrument I developed and selected results from the analysis. My results will demonstrate that students think in diverse ways, which, historically, were often masked by traditional instruments (concept inventories). Additionally, I will show that even when students provide answers that are scientifically “incorrect”, sense-making was at the forefront of their reasoning.