When connections between related observations and facts are not being made, introductory science
classes can be perceived as an accumulation of disjointed equations with the risk of losing both
students’ interest as well as their grasp of the materials. In astronomy we have to walk a tightrope
between being complete in our presentation of modern-day findings and skirting the surface of
quantum mechanics. We introduce Wien’s displacement law, Stefan–Boltzmann’s law, Hubble’s law, and
we talk about the age of the Universe and when it first became transparent. The derivation of all
these laws and their applications to get numbers out of observations requires knowledge of modern
physics, knowledge that students have not acquired (yet), so we tend to choose to not make
connections between them. In here, we offer an alternative approach to overcome these drawbacks: we
make connections between the main tenets of the laws, such as the temperature dependence that enters
Stefan–Boltzmann’…