Physics and Astronomy Activities

This page will house some of the activities and lessons I've created for Physics and Astronomy classes as part of the NSF fundend GK-12 Reach for the Stars program at Northwestern University.

Click the links below to access the different activities. Some require a Python installation, while others only require a browser.





Kinematics and Orbital Mechanics

    Keplerian Motion and the Radial Velocity Method

  • Click here for some activities that use an orbit modeler to simulate the effects of a plant orbiting a star. We can use some of these effects to detect planets around other stars!

    • How to make a ball bounce with Python

  • Click here for an introductory Python lesson which models the physics of a bouncing ball and animates it with Python.

    • Modeling the double pendulum

  • Click here for an introductory Python lesson which models the double pendulum.



Data Analysis

    Discovering Dark Energy with Python

  • Click here for an introductory Python lesson which fits real supernovae data to measure the Hubble constant and the amount of Dark Energy in the Universe.

    • Discovering Exoplanets with Python

  • Click here to learn about the radial velocity method for detecting exoplanets and how to fit real data for real planets.

    • A simple data analysis tool

  • Click here for a simple Python module that makes plotting and fitting x,y data easy.