Teachers' Guide to the 1919 Cosmic Times Articles
As the first edition of the Cosmic Times, several concepts are introduced, which will be revisited and built upon in future editions. The first concept, of course, is the idea of Einstein's General Relativity and its first confirmation. In addition, the idea of the size of the Universe is indroduced. In 1919, the Universe was viewed to contain only the
stars in the Milky Way. Other galaxies had not yet been resolved into their
constituent stars, so it was not apparent that some of the fuzzy nebula were,
indeed, outside our own galaxy. The Universe was a much smaller place than it
is today, but change was just on the horizon.
The language in the 1919 newspaper mimics the style of writing that would
have appeared in a real 1919 newspaper. The language may be a bit difficult for
your students to read, so we have also provided a modern-language
translation in newsletter form.
We have also provided a glossary, available in both pdf and Word
document formats, on the poster download page. The poster also shows a
layout that mimics the papers of the time, however, we have taken some creative
license to make it more readable in a classroom setting. Real newspapers of the
time would have had 5-7 narrow columns. The size of the text in each column
would have gotten smaller and smaller as you read down the column, so the more
details you wanted, the harder you would have had to work to read it.
Use the following links for further background on each of the articles in the 1919 Cosmic Times:
Download the teacher's guide for all Cosmic Times editions:
doc, pdf
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