CLEA Lab, Radar Rotation of Mercury
What you turn in to your instructor as a lab
Radar
Rotation of Mercury Manual as a Word doc file.
Radar
Rotation of Mercury Manual as an Adobe Acrobat pdf file.
You do not need the Sky and Telescope prepirnt to do this lab.
This
is mentioned in the student lab manual so that credit, attribution,
will
be given to the original formulators of this idea as a student lab in
introductory
astronomy classes. This is a scientific cultural thing.
After you have run and completed taking data use the form (or a Word version of the same
if
you have Word) to help you with the lab in doing the arithmetic.
Please
put your name on the lab and get it to your instructor.
Please
list the day and time that you ran the lab. From the v_orbit
velocity
in m/s or in km/s combined with the day and time you did the lab I will
know
whether you really did the lab as this number changes all of the time.
Please
do not even think about copying some one elses lab from a past
semester,
you will be discovered. To sucessfully cheat would require a
Ph.D.
level of understanding in astrophysics.
You will know that the lab has been done correctly if your period for
the
rotation rate is within a few days of 59 days. If you do not get
this
you need to figure out what you did wrong. Generally it is an
arithmetic
mistake, that is why I included the form with the equations in an
attempt
to make the arthmetic a little less frustrating. Labs are
learning
exercises not tests. Work at it until you get it right. You
can
communicate with other students or me, too. That is what we are
here
for.