With the start of the new semester, students return to the classroom eager and excited to learn! Well, ok maybe not everyone. Nevertheless, students do walk into our classroom with preconceived notions about how the world works, some of which are just wrong. A classic example is the cause of the seasons, where in survey after survey, a majority of respondents claim the cause of our seasons is the changing Sun-Earth distance (not right!). Curious to learn what my students think when they hear the word "Astronomy", I asked my Astronomy 120 (The Solar System) students to write three words on an index card. The wordle below is the result of this exercise.
