Qualitatively it's easy to understand (at least when you have the knowledge that we have now) but mathematically it must be pretty hard to calculate/solve correctly ...
And just imagine how brilliant the old folks like Copernicus and Galilei must have been, when the contemporary view was that the earth was in the center - to depart from that view and then arrive at the only logically consistent solution to the puzzle, and deduce correctly how it really worked, just brilliant ...
Yeah, you are right. But in my opinion, even qualitative understanding is difficult if you don't use suitable pedagogical tools to explain. The first time I saw this curve was when I was in high school, it was utterly non-intuitive. How on earth is mars moving back and then forward? I always wanted to see if this is the case and when I coded this and saw the retrograde motion appearing for the first time, it was really a goosebumps moment. I wanted to share that feeling with others, hence wrote this article.
Yeah well it's pretty easy to understand if you realize that it's just two balls moving on concentric circles with different speeds (and different momentary positions on the circles) moving relatively to each other - you can draw half a dozen states on a piece of paper and then it already becomes obvious whence the back and forth movement ...
But what really impresses me is that someone like Galileo grokked this, while he didn't have the ready-made model at hand that we have - he had to pull the whole thing out of thin air to just "see" it - that requires a huge amount of insight, imagination and ingenuity, and "aha" brilliance :-)
"I thought the concept of retrograde motion of planets was something that every astronomy students are well aware of."
The concept is taught but visual representations like this were not abundant 20 years ago. Most of class was lecture and text book and lab. There's a lot of ground to cover in astronomy and most of what I remember is about measuring light. I watched CGP Gray's "which planet is the closest?" and similarly the concepts of planet movement or there but often not realized.
Do you think there is sufficient space for this kind of visualizations in other topics in subjects like astronomy??? I'm asking this because I'm working on a project which is all about making use of interactive visualizations to improve STEM education???
I totally do but I may be a bit biased as my wife is an educator and I feel like there is so much potential to improve learning. Things are progressing but not always at the right speed and across the board. So I think there is a place for them but it's hard when schools only think of things like Chromebooks as something to replace paper pencil instead of thinking how to make learning more interactive and customized to a students need. Is there a need for this stuff? absolutely.
Removing the teacher and just putting the pupils behind a screen isn't gonna work ... but neither is the opposite, the old style drill method where pupils sit silently for hours while the teacher is "drilling" them with endless lists of facts and boring stuff ... I'm no expert but I suppose it's gotta be a healthy mix :-)
Do you think that the visualization has indeed really helped in having a good understanding??
Yes I think so, as they say: an image is worth a thousand words!
In my opinion, it has
I took Astronomy in High School and College (~20 yrs ago) and I've never considered or seen how Mars moves relative to Earth. This is blowing my mind.
I thought the concept of retrograde motion of planets was something that every astronomy students are well aware of.
Qualitatively it's easy to understand (at least when you have the knowledge that we have now) but mathematically it must be pretty hard to calculate/solve correctly ...
And just imagine how brilliant the old folks like Copernicus and Galilei must have been, when the contemporary view was that the earth was in the center - to depart from that view and then arrive at the only logically consistent solution to the puzzle, and deduce correctly how it really worked, just brilliant ...
Yeah, you are right. But in my opinion, even qualitative understanding is difficult if you don't use suitable pedagogical tools to explain. The first time I saw this curve was when I was in high school, it was utterly non-intuitive. How on earth is mars moving back and then forward? I always wanted to see if this is the case and when I coded this and saw the retrograde motion appearing for the first time, it was really a goosebumps moment. I wanted to share that feeling with others, hence wrote this article.
Yeah well it's pretty easy to understand if you realize that it's just two balls moving on concentric circles with different speeds (and different momentary positions on the circles) moving relatively to each other - you can draw half a dozen states on a piece of paper and then it already becomes obvious whence the back and forth movement ...
But what really impresses me is that someone like Galileo grokked this, while he didn't have the ready-made model at hand that we have - he had to pull the whole thing out of thin air to just "see" it - that requires a huge amount of insight, imagination and ingenuity, and "aha" brilliance :-)
"I thought the concept of retrograde motion of planets was something that every astronomy students are well aware of."
The concept is taught but visual representations like this were not abundant 20 years ago. Most of class was lecture and text book and lab. There's a lot of ground to cover in astronomy and most of what I remember is about measuring light. I watched CGP Gray's "which planet is the closest?" and similarly the concepts of planet movement or there but often not realized.
Do you think there is sufficient space for this kind of visualizations in other topics in subjects like astronomy??? I'm asking this because I'm working on a project which is all about making use of interactive visualizations to improve STEM education???
I totally do but I may be a bit biased as my wife is an educator and I feel like there is so much potential to improve learning. Things are progressing but not always at the right speed and across the board. So I think there is a place for them but it's hard when schools only think of things like Chromebooks as something to replace paper pencil instead of thinking how to make learning more interactive and customized to a students need. Is there a need for this stuff? absolutely.
Removing the teacher and just putting the pupils behind a screen isn't gonna work ... but neither is the opposite, the old style drill method where pupils sit silently for hours while the teacher is "drilling" them with endless lists of facts and boring stuff ... I'm no expert but I suppose it's gotta be a healthy mix :-)
Yes definitely, there should be some facility for the teacher to make use of this kind of interactive visualization while they teach.
dev.to/jithinks97/dynamic-learning...
This project that I'm doing has this goal in mind.
Got it, very nice project!