Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Design, Creation, And Cognitive Evaluation Of Ranking Tasks In Introductory Astronomy, Emily A. Welch

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Ranking tasks are a type of interactive formative assessment. They allow students to explore a concept by ranking similar situations for a specified variable, preferably without computation of that variable. I created two sets of introductory astronomy ranking tasks: the first connects the Hertzsprung–Russell (HR) diagram and the Stephan-Boltzmann luminosity equation; the second uses the transit method (TM) to rank exoplanets by comparing the depth, duration, and frequency of transits.

These tasks are designed within the constructivist pedagogical framework. They require students to call upon their own relevant schema to establish an assessment rule by which to rank the tasks. …

Identifying, Analyzing, And Using Discriminatory Variables For Classification Of Neutrino Signal And Background Noise In Multivariate Analysis In The Askaryan Radio Array Experiment, Jesse Osborn

Honors Theses

The Askaryan Radio Array Experiment, located near the South Pole, works to pinpoint specific instances of neutrinos from outside the solar system interacting with nucleons inside the Antarctic ice, emitting radio waves. I have taken data from the ARA stations which is presumed to be background noise and compared it to simulated data meant to look like a neutrino signal. I developed a suite of variables for discrimination between the two data sets, using a computer algorithm to generate a single output variable which can be used to distinguish noise events from signal events. I maximized this discrimination process for …