A New Lecture-Tutorial for Teaching about Molecular Excitations and
  Synchrotron Radiation
  Light and spectroscopy are among the most important and frequently taught
topics in introductory, college-level, general education astronomy courses.
This is due to the fact that the vast majority of observational data studied by
astronomers arrives at Earth in the form of light. While there are many
processes by which matter can emit and absorb light, Astro 101 courses
typically limit their instruction to the Bohr model of the atom and electron
energy level transitions. In this paper, we report on the development of a new
Lecture-Tutorial to help students learn about other processes that are
responsible for the emission and absorption of light, namely molecular
rotations, molecular vibrations, and the acceleration of charged particles by
magnetic fields.
