• No late assignments (homework or papers) will be accepted.

• Please read the chapters before class. Class time is valuable: it is much better spent in informed, active discussion among all of us than in just me talking.

• Asking questions is also part of active discussion. Please don't be shy about asking questions in class, or during office hours. Remember that the only "dumb" question is the one you didn't ask, that fouled you up later because you didn't ask it!

• Be sure to bring the text to class every session, it has some graphics that are hard to reproduce for projection.

• As far as class attendance goes, I'm sure I needn't remind you that tuition here is very expensive. Does it make sense to skip class, then? Of course not!

• Of course also, all work that students turn in as their own must really be their own. Proper credit and attribution of one's sources is so important in science, as well as in other fields. I will allow students to collaborate with each other on homework assignments, provided everyone lists their "co-investigators" on their papers. Scientists often do this, and the ability to collaborate well and work as part of a team is a good skill to have, in science and in most other professions.

  However, if you do collaborate on homework, it must be genuine collaboration: not one person doing all the work, and the others blindly copying. That's cheating! It's rather obvious whenever two students hand in papers that are exactly the same. Do these people think I don't notice it?

  It's also quite easy, these days, to catch anyone who has downloaded a paper from the Internet and is submitting it falsely as their own work: see www.plagiarism.org. Cheating and plagiarism are very serious matters, and the worst possible things for science. What's the point of doing science, creating new knowledge about the Universe, if it isn't honest?

• I expect to use e-mail extensively to communicate with you, and please feel free to send e-mail to me. However, all assignments, including homeworks, paper titles and summaries, and papers, must be handed in as hardcopies at the beginning of the class periods in which they are due.

  (It would also be a good idea for you to hang onto all copies of all work you have done in all your classes, ever. They'll be a big help if, one day, you find yourself teaching a class like this.)

• I also plan to use the World Wide Web extensively in this course. I will require you to know how to use an Internet browser and how to use e-mail. Most students will already know this, but if you don't, don't be embarrassed. Please let me know: I'd be glad to give you private lessons during my office hours. Although it would be a big advantage for your schoolwork, you need not own a computer, since you may use the computers in Evans Library, and in the Harris lab (on the second floor of Crawford).

  If Web access is still a problem for you, please come to office hours or make an appointment, and I'll let you use my machine. I won't therefore accept excuses such as "I couldn't use the Internet" or "My browser wasn't Java enabled." This last one was sprung on me last semester. The shame is that, if you can run Netscape, you can run Java: just pull down the menu and select "Enable Java."...

• Sorry, but I do NOT give makeups for missed midterm exams. Even then I don't like to: I can never be sure that a makeup was really fair, since it must be different from the regular exam. If you should have to miss a midterm exam for a good reason, I will void the part of the course grade that midterm would have counted and count the rest of the grade as 100%. Job interviews or illness documented by a doctor's note are good reasons. Athletic events, theatrical or musical performances, visiting relatives, or the surf being up are not good reasons for missing exams, or classes.

• I plan to make this course fairly rigorous, but not a killer. In other words, a good amount of work will result in a "B", but "A"s will be reserved for real distinction. Nevertheless, I hope to award many "A"s this semester, since I am very impressed with Florida Tech students.

  Six Florida Tech graduates have already become astronauts. I want it to become more like 50 or 60, composed largely of people in this class! More astronauts than ever will be needed for the International Space Station now being built. Within your working lifetimes, I expect there to be human flights to Mars and the asteroids, Moon bases, and greater things. I expect you to be the very people to explore the Solar System firsthand. Settling it, though, I think may be up to your children...but then you might always surprise me.

• All grading will be done "on a curve", meaning that how you do relative to everyone else in the class is more important to how your grade is determined than strict percentages, e.g. 90 - 100 is an A, etc. In this class, maybe 80 - 100 will be an A. We won't know until we've taken the exams and carefully thought about the results.

  I have to do this because we will be covering a lot of material at the forefronts of knowledge. We're not on the sidelines watching science anymore, this is science, and everything is constantly changing and so must be custom-made. I want you all to become first-class scientists - and scientists only get interesting, original results if they work on interesting, original problems. The unknown will play a prominent part in this class! You see, my hope is that, if I show you the mysteries of the Universe, you'll eventually go out and solve some.

  You'll need technical skills to do this, of course, so work hard in your other classes, including chemistry, calculus and higher math, physics, and computing. You'll need every bit of it, and you'll see it all again, I promise!

  If you all do well in this class, well enough for all of you to earn "A"s, I'll award you all "A"s. The Dean will think it's weird, but I get along with him well. If he thinks it's really weird, I'll tell him you're a talented bunch, and if I need to, I'll personally argue with him on your behalf.

  On the other hand, "F"s will be awarded for class non-attendance and flagrant neglect of class work - so don't do that, all right? I really hate awarding poor grades. I vastly prefer to see my students do well. My time is so much better spent that way, since students who succeed make much better future colleagues!

  Still, if for some reason you get into trouble serious enough to want to drop the course, such as getting so far behind you can't catch up, don't just stop coming to class and think that will be the end of it. Fill out a drop slip and turn it in to the Registrar: see "Drop/Withdrawal Policy" in the University Catalog, for how to do this. Dropping a class is a serious matter, though: try to avoid such a terrible waste of time and tuition money by keeping on top of things - for example, by always reading the chapters before class. Again, I want to see you, my students, do well!

• Florida Tech will not let me award extra credit for supplemental projects. As in real life, you must do your best to do things right the first time!

• Florida Tech also will not allow me to post grades, not even with names removed for privacy, nor to release grades over the phone. If you want to know your grade, please consult the PAWS Web page. Otherwise, you'll just have to wait until the grade reports are mailed to you. Sorry!

• Writing is a key skill for everyone, especially for scientists. No scientific investigation is complete until it becomes known to the world, and scientists do this by writing papers and publishing them. There have been too many important scientific discoveries that were ignored for years because the scientists who first did the work had not done a good job of writing up the results in a way that people could understand.

  I will therefore assign a 500-to-750-word paper, due at the last session of class. Since I take this so seriously, and since they were so good last semester in SPS 1010, I will personally read and grade every one. Having something to say in your paper is important, of course, and how you write it is important, too. Good content is so much easier to understand if it's written in a way that's easy to understand. For hints on writing, see The Elements of Style, by W. B. Strunk and E. B. White. This little book should be available in the campus bookstore for only about $3.95; there is also now an online version. Read it from cover to cover twice a year, for the rest of your life!

  These papers may be on any topic in contemporary or historical space science, space exploration, space engineering, solar or space physics, planetary science, remote sensing, astronomy, or astrophysics. Tentative paper titles (you're allowed to change your mind if you later discover something better: this is something I like particularly about science), with a typed or printed short (between 100- and 150-word) summary of your paper topic, will be due on March 28.

  Papers must be between 500 and 750 words long, typed or printed on standard 8.5-inch x 11-inch paper with standard, one-inch margins, in a readable 12-point serif font such as Times or Computer Modern Roman (not Helvetica, Monaco, or Geneva, which are sans serif and hard to read in large doses). There must be a reference list, in a format that I can use to look up the sources, since I hope your papers will be interesting.

  Five hundred to 750 words isn't much. I want these papers to be well-thought-out, polished, beautiful little gems that have something to say, not big loads of ore for which it isn't even clear what they're about. It will help to focus on a specific topic. A 500-750-word paper on the Sun would not do our magnificent star justice: there are whole books on the solar corona alone. A 500-750-word paper on the solar neutrino problem probably wouldn't work, either. What might work would be a 500-750-word paper on this summer's discovery of neutrino mass with the Super-Kamiokande detector, and its implications for the solar neutrino problem, or on just one of the many amazing observational results from the SOHO spacecraft, such as the discoveries of the mechanism for coronal heating, flare-induced Sun-quakes, or rivers or tornadoes on the Sun: no kidding! As another example, a 500-750-word paper on the Galilean satellites of Jupiter can't help but be superficial: that's less than one page per world. A 500-750-word paper on the atmosphere of Europa or the magnetic field of Callisto would be much better. Also interesting would be a 500-750-word paper that picks outs one particular aspect of the four worlds and does a comparative study, such as tidal heating.

  For ideas, see the texts, including chapters we haven't yet read, as well as current and back issues of popular magazines such as Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, Mercury, The Planetary Report, New Scientist, Physics Today, and Scientific American. These sources will also be useful for references for further reading. So will the "Suggested Reading" list on pp. 403-412 of TNSS. If Evans Library doesn't have these references, ask the librarians about obtaining them through Interlibrary Loans.

  The papers should be somewhat like articles in these magazines, but the best ones will be more like papers in refereed journals, such as Icarus, the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Eos, Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics), or Journal of Geophysical Research (Planets). Original sources, such as from these and similar journals, are greatly preferable to popularizations, encyclopediae, and other second-hand accounts.

  Originality and creativity are encouraged. You may also use the Web for research, too, but be careful of what you use, there's really a great deal of rubbish out there. And of course, when using the Web for research, be sure to attribute your sources just as with printed sources, by listing their Web addresses (also known as URLs)!

  Here are further guidelines on papers.

However, all of these are difficult and demanding professions. You need to know calculus, since without it you can't really understand physics. Without physics, you can't really understand much of anything in this physical Universe. One can't fake one's way through science courses, as one might be able to in literature courses by reading the Cliff's Notes instead of the real books assigned (and even then, students who do this almost never get "A"s). With science, you either know it - which means you can work the problems, because you understand the principles and not just regurgitate facts - or you don't. I therefore recommend the following helpful guide:

Prof. Simpson's How to Study page

Understanding the principles is vital, and don't confuse it with the wrong idea that "the idea is enough." Attention to detail matters: facts are not unimportant, and contemporary American education has gone much too far with this attitude. It will be essential for you to absorb a great many facts about the Universe, both in this course, and in your life, if you are to make much sense of it. On the other hand, rote memorization isn't science: once you know the observed facts, it's essential for you to make sense of them. That is the science!

It's also a harmful myth that if you're interested in science, you must be some sort of genius, and therefore will find science easy. I always had to work at it, myself, and everyone I know had to, as well - and many of them are now distinguished, first-rate scientists. All the sciences, including calculus, physics, chemistry, computing, and astronomy, aren't easy. But at least they are logical: they will yield, to sustained effort. Persistence is the key here, and in so much else of life.

Reading science texts and other technical literature is much more intense than reading other literature. It helps a lot to take notes when reading. It is also essential to read the chapters before class: it always amazes me how often this goes with getting good grades!

Class participation is also essential. I want you to pursue your education actively. I greatly encourage active class discussion - and please, by all means, if you don't understand anything I'm saying, please raise your hand and let me know! Otherwise, we're both wasting our time; teachers are only really teaching, if their students are really learning!