Too Old to Learn

Author: gibson john
Posted: February 5, 2010 at 4:14PM
Source: The Nucleus collection

I am a 57 year old African American male who recently enrolled in an astronomy class.  I feel lost.  When I was in grade school some hundred light years ago, education was a deprived comodity for me.  Now that it is made available, it is difficult for me to remember all the terms.  Can anyyou give me some advise for doing well in this new subject.  The interrest is there, it is the comprehension that is getting in my way.

• 9-12: 4A/H3. Increasingly sophisticated technology is used to learn about the universe. Visual, radio, and X-ray telescopes collect information from across the entire spectrum of electromagnetic waves; computers handle data and complicated computations to interpret them; space probes send back data and materials from remote parts of the solar system; and accelerators give subatomic particles energies that simulate conditions in the stars and in the early history of the universe before stars formed.

• 11D (9-12) #1.  Representing large numbers in terms of powers of ten makes it easier to think about them and to compare things that are greatly different.

• 12B (9-12) #6.  Express and compare very small and very large numbers using powers-of-ten notation.