  Many undergraduate radio astronomy courses are unable to give a detailed
treatment of aperture synthesis due to time constraints and limited math
backgrounds of students. We have taken a laboratory-based approach to teaching
radio interferometry using a set of college-level, table-top exercises. These
are performed with the Very Small Radio Telescope (VSRT), an interferometer
developed at the Haystack Observatory using satellite TV electronics as
detectors and compact fluorescent light bulbs as microwave signal sources. The
hands-on experience provided by the VSRT in these labs allows students to gain
a conceptual understanding of radio interferometry and aperture synthesis
without the rigorous mathematical background traditionally required.
  The data are quickly and easily processed using a user-friendly data analysis
Java package, VSRTI\_Plotter.jar. This software can also be used in the absence
of the equipment as an interactive computer activity to demonstrate an
interferometer's responses to assorted surface brightness distributions. The
students also gain some familiarity with Fourier transforms and an appreciation
for the Fourier relations in interferometry using another Java package, the
Tool for Interactive Fourier Transforms (TIFT). We have successfully used these
tools in multiple offerings of our radio astronomy course at Union College
