Lessons about Space and the Universe
The Moon has fascinated people throughout history and while most of us may never touch its surface with our own two hands that doesn't mean we can't understand what the ever-changing bright silvery disk is really doing in the darkness beyond our atmosphere. This lesson provides students the opportunity to recreate the lunar surface and bombard it with asteroids, to experience a taste of space and feel a fraction of what astronauts go through, peel back the layers and see beneath the surface, recreate craters, learn about orbits and why we can't see the dark side of the moon, determine what life might be like without the moon in our sky, practice the phases with the Oreo Moon, and determine the veracity of legends about lunar luck.
What do you begin an astronomy lesson with? A first taste of the constellations? Celestial co-ordinates? Physics? History? Our galaxy, the Milky Way, a spinning top, with swirling arms extending from the center like a pinwheel. Our Sun, one of about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Our galaxy? Just one of roughly 100 billion in the visible universe. With all that to cover, where in the worlds is the best place to start? In this lesson Students not only find constellations, create models, and become able to picture the dimensions of our solar system, among many other things they discover that with Space no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.
Can you imagine if your job might only last a few hours, a few days, a few months, but it took years of training, constant preparation, and lifelong dedication in the hopes that you’d get to do it? That’s what life is like for astronauts. In this lesson students complete, “missions” to train like an astronaut, learn why astronauts need to be physically fit, and gain a better understanding of just what astronauts have to do to keep in shape on Earth so they can get shot into space!
Any kind of journey takes preparation. You have to know what to pack, you need to know what the weather is going to be like, and you have to figure out how you’re going to get there. In this lesson students have been hired by Solar Travels, Inc and are in charge of a new company division that will put together a vacation package that can safely deliver the company’s very important clients (V.I.Cs) to the ultimate vacation destination and back home to Earth. And when the journey is measured in light years, there’s plenty of time for “Are we there yet?”
It’s like a traffic jam in outer space, we’ve got rocks and dust flying all over the place! There’s metal and dirt just zooming around, and scientists know surely more will be found. A big fender bender would mean the end of life as we know it. An asteroid crash? Well, that would just blow it. What do they taste like, those rocks from so far, and are they really lots bigger than Grandmother’s car? Who is Icarus and why did he fall? Can a collision be avoided at all? How can we tell if The End is quite near? Shouldn’t we all be quaking with fear? These questions are answered, if you just click right here.
“If it wasn't grown; it was probably mined.” What is it that makes humans dig endlessly into the dark, risking their lives in search of glimmering scraps of gold, dark iron, bright copper? Our world hinges upon metal. The progress of cave-dwelling humans to today’s modern society, progress in agriculture, transport, technology, advancement in arts and crafts, none would have been possible without metal. But what of the day when every scrap has been found? Where do we turn? In this lesson students learn what their cars are really made of, what makes one man’s junk another man’s treasure, get a taste of mining, pan for gold, and make a plan for when the supply has a limit.
