In this lesson, students will examine time lapse photos and videos to see the movement of stars during the night. Students will use star wheels to track the visibility of constellations throughout the year and graph the number of days a constellation is visible each month. Using data from the graphs, they will collaboratively construct a large-scale model of the sun, Earth, and constellations to better understand the role Earth’s movement and axial tilt play in the visibility of stars. Finally, students will draw a diagram and write an explanation of the apparent movement of stars using data from the graphs and class model.
This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.
Students will create sun shadow plots to demonstrate how the position and motion of Earth with respect to the sun causes changes in the length and direction of shadows. Students will observe and record shadow data for an entire day.
After collecting the data, students will analyze the data and create a line graph to determine at which time of the day the longest shadows are created.
This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.
