Astronomy Biathlon
Grade Level: Grades 9 and 10
Description
This event will be composed of two events covering broad topics in astronomy including constellations and the nights sky, and planetary systems.
Participants
Teams of up to six.
Materials
Students will be provided with a protractor kit, and graph paper. Your teams must supply: one nonprogrammable calculator; each student must bring a pen or pencil to write with.
Rules
Constellations and the Night Sky
Students will be required to identify major constellations, stars, and planets visible from London Ontario over the course of the year. Students should also be able to recognize locations within the Solar System from the views of their skies. The sky views for each question will be projected onto a screen using the free planetarium program "Stellarium" ( www.stellarium.org).
Planetary Systems
Students will be provided with information on a known extrasolar planetary system (listed in the exoplanet catalogue exoplanets.org/table) and will have to answer questions based on the data. Numbers (such as radii and masses) will be given in units of our own Solar System. Samples of possible questions: "Which planets are likely to be gas giants?" and "Which planets are likely to have liquid water?". Students should be familiar with understanding the relationship between metric units (kg, km, cm) and Solar/Earth/Jupiter masses and radii, (For example, the R_Jupiter = 69,911 km or R_Earth = 6378 km).
Communication Devices
Students may not use any device such as a smartphone or tablet to communicate with any outside source during this event.
Judging
Each event will be worth 10 points, with a total maximum score possibility of 20. To achieve full marks, each question must be answered correctly and with a good explanation to get full points. The winner will be the team with the best score on a 20 point scale. In the event of a tie, the overall quality of the written responses to questions will be judged.
