Statistics of the All -Russian control in astronomy

On October 8, 2016, the first All -Russian control in astronomy was held, in which the planetariums and various educational institutions (schools, universities) of 25 cities of Russia, from Bryansk to Vladivostok, participated. The total number of participants was 6623 people, most in Novosibirsk (3910), Kazan (777), Nizhny Novgorod (486) and Yaroslavl (377), where local planetaries became the organizers. The Moscow Planetarium acted as the main organizer of this event, which set the task of this action to obtain objective information about the level of astronomical literacy of the Russian population, taking into account its age and social structure; Participants could get an independent assessment of their knowledge in the field of astronomy. Also, with the help of this event, the organizers sought to attract the attention of the media and Russian society to the problem of astronomical literacy of the population.

The control included 35 questions on various topics related to astronomy and the study of space space, for example, such (readers of the TRV-hobby can test themselves):

1. Who opened the planet Pluto:
   a) Jan Geliye, b) William Gershel, c) Clyde Tombo.
2. What is the constellation in this list "extra":
   a) Volopas, b) Hercules, c) swan, d) lira, e) Orion.
3. Most of the satellites were found in the planet:
   a) Saturn, b) Uranus, c) Jupiter.
4. Meteor flows are observed by flying out of the sky, which is called:
   a) quadrature, b) radiant, c) elongation.
5. How long the light comes to us from the Andromeda nebula:
   a) about 2000 years, b) about 2 million years, c) 250 million years.
6. What was the name of the interplanetary station, which studied the planet Venus and the Comet Galley:
   a) “Apollo”, b) “Vega”, c) “Pioneer”.
7. What is the muse of astronomy:
   a) Melpomena, b) Terpsychor, c) Urania.

Also on October 8–9, Yandex held on its page on the Internet online testing with the same questions in which everyone could take part. For two days, 5653 people answered the control questions who received an average rating of 3 points ( https://yandex.ru/astronomy?ncrnd=5461 ) (Fig. 1). The same result was demonstrated by 60% of the cities where the survey was conducted in planetariums and training centers. This can be seen on a comparative diagram for several cities (Fig. 2), which shows what share of the participants answered correctly to the corresponding percentage of the questions.

In Kazan, more than 30 visitors to the planetarium of Kazan Federal University, where the control was held, agreed to take part in testing. The age of the participants ranged from 6 to 79 years, basically these were middle -aged people (two times more women than men). It is interesting that two children of six and seven years old volunteered to participate in the control and showed the results no worse than adults. Some visitors to the planetarium refused to write the control, assuring that they did not understand anything in astronomy. But many of those participants who first claimed whether they did not remember or know anything, in the end they answered not so badly. The results of the survey in the KFU planetarium turned out to be approximately the same as the national average - “three plus”. 22% of the participants correctly answered 20-30% and 50–70% of the questions, 40% of the participants answered 30-50% of the questions, and only 16% were able to correctly answer more than 70% of the questions. Note that only a quarter of the participants studied astronomy at school!

The thematic variety of issues made it possible to evaluate in which sections of astronomy are more compared to the inhabitants of Russia (Fig. 3). Noticeably more confident knowledge was demonstrated when answering questions about the planets of the solar system and the astronautics, as well as about works of art devoted to the cosmos. The study of the solar system and space studies are more often covered in the media, so the percentage of the correct answers to these questions is higher. The two questions that received the smallest number of correct answers were not formulated not entirely correctly and caused discussions among astronomers.

Also, the All -Russian control in astronomy was held in thirteen schools of Kazan and the Republic of Tatarstan. Several schools of the Vysokogorsky district, Burnashevskaya secondary school of the Apastovsky district, the Bolsheatninsky secondary school of the Atninsky district, Lyceum No. 78 named after 78 named after A. S. Pushkin and gymnasium No. 76 of the city of Naberezhnye Chelny, Lyceum "Innopolis"; From one to 60 guys were interviewed. In Kazan, this action was supported by the university lyceum. Lobachevsky and IT lyceum, as well as school No. 119, where not only students of grades 4-11, but also teachers and other employees of the school (total 193 people) answered the controls of the control. But the largest number of participants-284 people-gathered the IT-Lyceum KFU. How interesting the event was, it is evident from the letter of the teacher of physics and astronomy of the IT-lyceum KFU Suyumbiki Zakirovna Gainutdinova. “Everything went very well with us, the whole lyceum wrote. It is clear that my “astronomers” wrote well. Teachers also tried very hard. Some all night before the exam on the Internet sat and watched films on astronomy. It turned out the holiday, the people were so worried. My circles were on top. The guys still discussed the issues for a long time, argued and checked their answers with the answers of the circle. Great!"

Schoolchildren demonstrated a fairly high level of knowledge in the field of astronomy. Many students who correctly answered most of the questions ended up in the IT lyceum, the Kluminsky secondary school of the Vysokogorsky district and in the Kazan school No. 119. There were quite few participants who answered less than 20% of the questions. During the campaign, schoolchildren asked if they wanted to study astronomy at the school as a separate subject, and more than 80% of the children answered in the affirmative. Relatively high results were shown by students of rural schools, this is due to the fact that there were mainly the guys who are fond of astronomy, while in cities they answered questions in whole classes.

The results of the All -Russian control in astronomy, the average age of the participants of which was 22 years, once again demonstrated a not very high level of knowledge in astronomy among the population, which is primarily due to more than twenty -year in the school program of the subject "Astronomy". However, these results are not “zero”, that is, the inhabitants of Russia still have certain knowledge, therefore, astronomers and teachers should strive to motivate people to study astronomy, since modern astronomical representations are an integral part of the picture of the world of an educated person. The results can also be used to develop recommendations for the dissemination of astronomical knowledge and the return of astronomy to the school curriculum, which was announced in September 2016 by the new Minister of Education and Science of Russia Olga Vasilieva.

Answers to the control questions given in the text

1. Planet Pluto was opened on February 18, 1930 at the Lowell Observatory by the American astronomer Claid Tombo .

2. Of the five listed constellations, the Orion , observed in the sky in the winter, while the rest of the constellations are considered “summer”.

3. At the moment, the most satellites - 67 pieces - openly at the planet Jupiter .

4. Meteors (“falling stars”), which are part of meteor streams during visual observations, seem to fly out of one point in the sky - a radiant , since the dust pills that make up a meteor cloud, entering the atmosphere of the Earth, move along parallel trajectories, and meteoric traces in the future intersect in this very point.

5. The closest to us the large spiral galaxy M31 (Andromeda nebulae) is located at a distance of 2.5 million light years .

6. Soviet interplanetary automatic stations, which in 1984-1986 successfully studied the planet Venus and the comet Galley, received the names “Vega-1” and “Vega-2” in honor of their study objects.

7. Muse - the patroness of the science of astronomy is Urania .

Table with the results of the All -Russian control in astronomy in several educational institutions of Tatarstan at various levels

Almaz Galeev,
cand. physical. Sciences, Associate Professor of the Astronomical Observatory
them. V.P. Engelhardt, Institute of Physics KFU