Alfred Wegener: Difference between revisions
→Royal Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Berlin
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Alfred's first-year academic program was analytic geometry, calculus, physics and chemistry. To these fundamental preparatory studies, Alfred also added a course in "practical astronomy". This is the program he would pursue from October 1899 until the following April (the end of the winter semester).
[[Adolf Marcuse]]'s "Practical Astronomy" course for the 1899 - 1900 year had three segments. The very first part was "Theory and Use of Astronomical Instruments, Especially for Geographical Position Finding." Marcuse took Alfred and the other students on field trips and taught them to level and orient the transits, telescopes, alt-azimuths and other instrument. He taught them how to calculate instrument errors and how to correct observations for temperature -- expansion and contraction of the instrument itself -- and for the relative humidity -- since the amount of water vapor in the air changed the way the light was refracted, causing a measurable and correctable angular displacement. He also regaled them with stories of expedition science, both from his work in Hawaii and his more recent trip to German Samoa. Alfred had landed not just in an astronomy course in which he could do astronomy, but in one that implied that doing astronomy sometimes involved expeditions to distant places.
In the second wing of the course, Marcuse took the students through a general survey of the fundamental ideas and achievements of modern astronomy. The lectures were illustrated with lantern slides. Marcuse was a prolific photographer. He taught every course using slides and believed that all subjects benefited from profuse illustration.
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