Measuring Dark Energy

In this lesson, students simulate an experiment in which the discovery of dark energy can be made by plotting modern supernova distances on a Hubble Diagram. Data is provided in an Excel spreadsheet (see related resources). In order to complete this... (View More) activity, students should be familiar with Hubble's Law and the concepts of absolute luminosity, apparent luminosity, and Doppler shift (particularly redshift). This activity can be done using either a computer graphing program or manually with graph paper. This lesson is part of the "Cosmic Times" teacher's guide and is intended to be used in conjunction with the 2006 Cosmic Times Poster. (View Less)