We will be experimenting with providing audio recordings of lectures from a previous semester, for students who are cannot attend an occasional lecture due to illness or to an excused activity. If you miss a lecture, listen to the recording, and then give us some clear feedback on how helpful it was in acquiring the material. If your feedback helps us to improve the course, we will excuse your absence.
You will need a high-speed internet link of some sort in order to acquire these recordings. The lectures are provided in both a low-resolution (2 to 6 MB per lecture) and a high-resolution (8 to 24 MB per lecture) MP3 format. Do not attempt to download either size file over a phone line! If you do not have a fast internet link at your home, you can download the files onto a USB memory stick, or into an IPOD, from a NMSU computer at the library or elsewhere on campus, and then copy them to your own computer.
The recordings can be played using RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, XMMS, or any other audio file player of your choice. If you have questions about music players, consult a friend who plays lots of music on their computer for advice.
These recordings are best played while looking at a HTML browser, so that you can follow along with the relevant lecture slides (listed under Contents for each lecture). We have edited them to remove intervals where students worked together in small discussion groups, or worked on in-class assignments, and so they are each less than 75 minutes in length.
| Lecture | Contents | Date | Length | Lo-Res | Hi-Res | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Contents of the Universe | Thursday | August 23 | 49 min. | 5.7 MB | 22.9 MB |
| 2 | Scientific Notation | Tuesday | August 28 | 34 min. | 4.0 MB | 16.0 MB |
| 3 | Timescales in the Universe | Thursday | August 30 | 21 min. | 2.5 MB | 9.9 MB |
| 4 | The Phases of the Moon | Tuesday | September 4 | 28 min. | 3.3 MB | 13.1 MB |
| 5 | The Seasons on Earth | Thursday | September 6 | 26 min. | 3.1 MB | 12.2 MB |
| 6 | The Origin of the Moon | Tuesday | September 11 | 18 min. | 2.1 MB | 8.6 MB |
| 7 | Mechanics of the Solar System | Thursday | September 13 | 36 min. | 4.3 MB | 17.4 MB |
| 8 | The Geometry of the Solar System | Tuesday | September 18 | 36 min. | 4.2 MB | 16.9 MB |
| 9 | The Terrestrial Planets | Tuesday | September 20 | 25 min. | 3.0 MB | 11.8 MB |
| 10 | Geocentric and Heliocentric Models | Tuesday | September 25 | 47 min. | 5.6 MB | 22.2 MB |
| 11 | The Formation of the Planets | Thursday | September 27 | 12 min. | 1.4 MB | 5.6 MB |
| 12 | The Scientific Method | Thursday | October 2 | 6 min. | 0.7 MB | 2.7 MB |
| 13 | The Jovian Planets | Tuesday | October 9 | 40 min. | 4.7 MB | 18.8 MB |
| 14 | Waves and Light | Tuesday | October 16 | 44 min. | 4.8 MB | 19.3 MB |
| 15 | Atomic Structure | Thursday | October 18 | 48 min. | 5.6 MB | 22.5 MB |
| 16 | Absorption and Emission | Tuesday | October 23 | 17 min. | 2.0 MB | 8.0 MB |
| 17 | Stellar Temperatures | Thursday | October 25 | 13 min. | 1.6 MB | 6.4 MB |
| 18 | Nuclear Reactions | Tuesday | October 30 | 35 min. | 4.0 MB | 16.2 MB |
| 19 | Binary Stars | Thursday | November 1 | 16 min. | 1.9 MB | 7.7 MB |
| 20 | The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram | Tuesday | November 6 | 29 min. | 3.4 MB | 13.8 MB |
| 21 | White Dwarfs | Thursday | November 8 | 19 min. | 2.2 MB | 8.9 MB |
| 22 | Neutron Stars | Tuesday | November 13 | 32 min. | 3.7 MB | 15.0 MB |
| 23 | Black Holes | Thursday | November 15 | 44 min. | 5.2 MB | 20.8 MB |
| 24 | The Milky Way | Tuesday | November 27 | 28 min. | 3.3 MB | 13.3 MB |
| 25 | The Expansion of the Universe | Thursday | November 29 | 26 min. | 3.1 MB | 12.2 MB |
| 26 | A Universe of Galaxies | Tuesday | December 4 | 47 min. | 5.5 MB | 22.2 MB |
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0349155. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).