ObservationalCosmology

The nature of the course

Conventional lectures may be a good way of getting a set of notes into your folder, but they are too passive to be a very good way of communicating real understanding. This course is based on the idea that your grasp of cosmology will be much better if you research and assemble your own set of notes. It will also help you learn the valuable general skill of being able to research and understand any topic with minimum assistance. To help you construct your own notes, the course has been divided into 5 units, and I will give guidance as to what material you should cover in each unit, and where you can find the information you need. This Home Page will provide useful guidance and links, and also a place for me to post any notices.  There will be some lectures, but you should not expect all the course  material  to be covered in the lectures.

The structure of the course

The course consists of 5 units:

• Unit 1: The Hot Big Bang
• Unit 2: Cosmological theory
• Unit 3: Evolution from the Big Bang
• Unit 4: Dark matter & baryons
• Unit 5: Observational properties and cosmological tests 

Each unit will have a lecture at the start, which may be pedagogical (to help you with tricky topics) or to give you an overview or research perspective. In addition, each unit has a discussion/problems class and a set of self-test problems, with solutions, so that you can check your own understanding. You can get a pretty good feel for the structure of the course by looking at the timetable. Given the nature of the course, it is essential that you should work on it through the term. To encourage 3rd year students to do this, and to give you some more formal feedback on your progress, three of the units will also have associated assessed exercises. Each of these is worth 10% of the course credit. Year 4 students are encouraged to attempt these exercises, which will provide valuable practice, but should not submit answers for assessment. Instead, Year 4 students will tackle a separate, more research-orientated, exercise worth 25%.

Given the nature of the Y4 exercise, students with little astronomical background are likely to struggle, and are advised against taking this course in Year 4.

Notes

An important aspect of a self-study module such as this is making a good set of notes.  The notes you make should be clear and concise so that you can extract information from them quickly whenever you need it (including in the exam). Try to run quickly through a topic before starting to take notes, so that you can get an overview of what the important points are.  Then go back and make notes on those points. Finally, read through your notes and make sure they are easily comprehensible to you. Your notes for this course should be similar in volume to those for other, more conventional, lecture courses.You should also bring them to all the Obs. Cos. classes, where you may require them.

Assessment

Y3 Students

• Three assessed exercises (each worth 10%) during the Autumn term.
• Final examination (worth 70%). This will be designed to test your understanding. To give you an extra incentive to compile a good, and well-ordered set of notes, you will be able to take your notes (but not text books) into the examination with you.

Y4 Students

• A research-orientated exercise (worth 25%) during the Autumn term. Details will be provided in due time, together with advice and links to support this exercise.
• Final examination (worth 75%). This will be designed to test your understanding. To give you an extra incentive to compile a good, and well-ordered set of notes, you will be able to take your notes (but not text books) into the examination with you.