Astronomy 141:
Life in the Universe
Prof. Richard Pogge, MTWThF 12:30

Homework Assignments

There are 5 homework assignments. The date out and due will be posted here shortly.

Homework	Worksheet	Handed Out	Due Date
1	Assignment	Tues, Jan 10	Tues, Jan 17
2	Assignment	Tues, Jan 24	Wed, Feb 1
3	Assignment	Tues, Feb 7	Tues, Feb 14
4	Assignment	Tues, Feb 21	Tues, Feb 28
5	Assignment	Tues, Feb 28	Fri, Mar 9
	hw5data.txt	Data file needed for HW5

Each homework assignment consists of short-answer questions. The questions are open-book, open-notes, open-discussion. The homework sheet also doubles as your worksheet, and you must turn in your answers on this worksheet at the beginning of class on the due date.

Collectively the homework will count for 25% of the final grade, 5% per assignment. So doing well on the homework will have an impact on your grade.

These homework problems are an opportunity for me to ask more challenging or involved questions than I can reasonably ask during a quiz or the final exam. These questions are designed to get you thinking about and discussing the course topics in an active way. I design some problems to get you thinking quantitatively about ideas that will be coming up many times in later lectures. I strongly encourage you to form study groups to discuss the questions among yourselves, but in the end you must decide on the final answers yourself (beware the perils of group-think, which can lead down the wrong path as often as not!).

For those problems that require you to work out a problem, you must show all of your work to get full credit. If you just write down and answer, and it is wrong, we will give it zero points, as we won't have any information about how you tried to solve the problem, and so cannot assign partial credit if the setup is right but you made a simple mistake in the final execution.

We plan on having your homework assignments graded and ready to hand back in class as soon as possible following the due date. The exception is the last homework assignment which is due on the last day of class and will be handed back at Final Exam on Tuesday, March 13.

No Late Homework will be accepted.

"Late" means after the end of class (1:30pm) on the due date. Exceptions will be made only for legitimate, documented emergencies, arranged in advance in writing with Prof. Pogge.

Legal Statement

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) prohibits me from posting any individual's homework results on the web. Instead, you will need to pick up your homework results in-person after class during the week following the due date up until the next in-class exam, and then thereafter they will only be available from the TA during his regularly scheduled office hours. FERPA rules prohibit us from allowing others to pick up results for you.

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