Classroom activities

For some time now, our own workbook for the transit of Venus has been prominently featured in the top bar of this website, and judging from the number of downloads, it’s highly appreciated. While it remains available for free download, the workbook can now also be purchased in hardcopy.

In four chapters and forty problems, students gain a deeper understanding of the frequency of the transit of Venus, angular measurements, parallax measurements to establish distances and finding the physical properties of exoplanets from light curves. By making calculations, analysing diagrams and using data from this website, they are finding themselves in the roles of an astronomer, historian or organiser of a public viewing session. It’s a great way to prepare for the transit with students aged 16-18 following a higher level of science education. The main feature of the problems presented in the workbook is that the students are working with real data, retrieved from scientific sources and observational reports. This way, they get a sense of how science really works.

Get your copies today and introduce the transit of Venus to your students!