About astroex.org

Postal address:
    European Southern Observatory
    Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2
    D-85748 Garching bei München
    Germany
Phone:
    +49 89 3200 6306 (or 3200 60)
Fax:
    +49 89 3200 64 80 (or 320 32 62)
E-mail:
    info@astroex.org

Collaboration

Texts:
Anne Værnholt Olesen, Lars Lindberg Christensen, Arntraud Bacher, Rainer Gaitzsch, Jean-Marc Brauer, Emma Fosbury, Robert A.E. Fosbury, Jean-Marc Brauer

Coordination:
Lars Lindberg Christensen and Richard West

Graphics design:
Martin Kornmesser


Dutch translation

Eddy Echternach, Robert Wielinga and Peter Barthel

Coordination:
Peter Barthel

Partly financed by:
NOVA, NAC, Gratama-stichting, Groninger Universiteitsfonds, Kapteyn Instituut van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen


French translation

Thibaut Plisson and Nausicaa Delmotte


German translation

Birgit Armsdorfer, Arntraud Bacher and Paul Scheier

Italian translation

Carmelo Evoli, Angelo Meduri, Piero Benvenuti and Eugenio Benvenuti

Partly financed by:
Società Astronomica Italiana (SAIt), la sezione Calabria della SAIt.


Swedish translation

Martin Lundqvist and Britt Sjöberg


Spanish translation

Álvaro Llorente


Thanks to:

Karl-Heinz Lotze (Germany), Nino Panagia (STScI/ESA), Nina
Troelsgaard Jensen (Frederiksberg Seminarium), Anne Rhodes, Jesper Sollerman, Tycho Brahe Planetarium (Denmark), Wendy Freedman, Darren Reed, Arsen Hajian, Jos de Bruijne, Ole Hjort Rasmussen, Helle and Henrik Stub (Denmark), Johann Penzl (Germany), Thibaut Plisson (USA), Marina Rejkuba (ESO), Manuela Zoccali (ESO), la Professoressa Angela Misiano (Liceo Scientifico "Leonardo da Vinci", Reggio Calabria).

Credits: Web version

Technical

The interactive versions of the exercises work in Internet Explorer 4.0+, the newer versions of Mozilla, and Netscape (see below for more detailed info). The site is optimized for the resolution 1024x768., but it is no problem to go through the exercise using the resolution 800x600.

Why interactive education?

There are different reasons for producing interactive educational material.

Especially in the areas of physics and astronomy - there is often a need to visualize concepts that are less easy to 'grasp' for most students. Interactivity can make the process of explaning these concepts easier and more 'living'

Interactive education can be seen as a supplement (although not a substitute!) to the 'normal' class-room education. The topics can be treated in a different way that the normal class set-up allows.

Interactivity can help to activate students, and spark an interest with some students who normally would be less interested in a given topic.

Interactivity can be a good opportunity for teachers to integrate IT in the education. Using relevant software always makes IT education more interesting.

Why use Java?

Naturally one of the main reasons for making interactive version of these exercises is to gain easy access to the exercises, which otherwise only has published in a few thousands printed copies and as .pdf files. For us there were two options for the choice of programming language: Flash and Java. Whereas Flash is optimal with respect to the graphical presentation, Java does a better job of performing real measurements and calculations on e.g. images.

We decided to use PHP for the server communication and storage of user data since it is widely used and freely available.

Supported Browsers and OS combinations (Interactive Exercises)

WINDOWS
LINUX
MAC

Known bugs


1. Sometimes the calc button in the interactive version of exercise 1 needs an extra click or two.
2. Under LINUX there is a problem where text entered in the applets is sometimes not shown.