Interactive
CK-12 Foundation

Orbital Motion

For Students 6th - 12th Standards
Why do planets orbit the sun in ellipses when moons orbit their planet in circles? Pupils control the semi-major axis, eccentricity of the orbit, and position angle. The resulting orbital appears with the related force vectors as...
Lesson Plan
NOAA

Animals of the Fire Ice

For Teachers 5th - 6th Standards
When the sun's rays can't reach the producers in a food web, where does all the energy come from? Extreme environments call for extreme food sources. Young scientists investigate creatures that appear to get their energy from methane...
Performance
Radford University

Trouble in the Orchard

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
It's no fun catching a fungus. Scholars first investigate how the seasons affect the angle of the sun and the lengths of shadows. They then apply right triangle trigonometry to determine the height of trees based on their shadows to...
Lesson Plan
California Academy of Science

Modeling Eclipses with Size and Distance Scales

For Teachers 3rd - 8th
Size within the solar system is a difficult thing for pupils to imagine. Using everyday objects, they build models to show the scale between the sun, moon, and Earth. They situate their props in proportional distances between the objects...
Activity
Museum of Science

Solar Cooker

For Teachers K - 6th
A warm, sunny day is perfect for eating great food and learning about science at the same time. Future engineers build solar cookers to prepare food using the Sun's rays. They learn how energy converts from solar energy to thermal energy.
Lesson Plan
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Bonneville

Designing a Solar Phone Charger

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
What a bright idea! Working in groups, scholars design a solar phone charger by applying concepts from the unit. They use solar modules and buck and boost converters in their creations, which must be able to charge a phone after...
Lesson Plan
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Bonneville

Macro-Scale Solar

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
There's no substitute for the power of the sun. The second of four installments of the Solar Resources Assessment unit looks at macro-scale photovoltaic (PV) technology. Future scientists first learn about PV modules with a PowerPoint...
Activity
NASA

Collecting Light: Inverse Square Law Demo

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Light, distance, and mathematics come together to help scientists plan for space missions. Groups examine the relationship between distance from the sun and light availability in a hands-on exploration activity. They model the inverse...
Activity
NASA

Exploring Exoplanets with Kepler

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Calculate the movement and properties of planets like professional astronomers! Scholars use Kepler's third law to find Mercury and Venus's distance from the sun. Using changes in brightness of distant stars and Kepler's third law,...
Lesson Plan
Newseum

Civil Rights News Coverage: Looking Back at Bias

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Not all southern newspapers covered the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Young journalists investigate how The Lexington (Ky. Herald-Leader and The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun re-examined their coverage of the movement. After...
Activity
GLOBE Program

Calculating Relative Air Mass

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Combine math and science with fun in the sun! Scientists build a solar gnomon using reusable materials to calculate relative air mass. Mathematicians measure the pole's shadow and use the data to solve for relative air mass....
Interactive
Curated OER

Sunspots and Space Weather

For Students 4th - 8th
This assignment is out of this world! It is an online worksheet about sunspots and solar cycles, a sort of WebQuest if you will. Links to two NASA websites and spaceweather.com are written into the questions so that your aspiring...
Lesson Plan
Journey Through the Universe

Voyage of Discovery

For Teachers 5th - 8th Standards
Did you know that Pluto is smaller than the United States of America? It is difficult to conceptualize the size of planets and the distance between them, and the lesson addresses those exact issues. After a discussion, pupils create...
Lesson Plan
Journey Through the Universe

Where to Look For Life?

For Teachers 5th - 8th Standards
Every year we discover new planets including more than 1,000 in 2016 alone. Will we ever find life on another planet? The lesson includes two activities to help scholars understand this concept. First, they analyze the temperature range...
Lesson Plan
Rochester Institute of Technology

Solar Energy

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Warm up to the idea of solar energy. A lesson includes three activities that challenge scholars to apply knowledge in new ways. First, they learn to run an alarm clock without a battery by using solar energy. Next, they complete an...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Shadows and Skyscrapers

For Teachers 8th
Eighth graders explain the relationship between the position of the sun, a city's latitude and shadow length. Ratio's, geometry, and algebra are used to determine the shadow lengths and building heights. A sun angle (altitude) charts to...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Solar Eclipse

For Teachers K - 3rd
Pupils demonstrate the revolution of the moon around the earth and the effect of its direct alignment in between the earth and the sun.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Sensing Energy: Designing to Stay Cool

For Teachers 2nd - 4th
Students examine the energy the sun produces on a daily basis. In groups, they discover the properties of visible and invisible light. They also adjust the exposure time to change the properties of various objects. To end the lesson,...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Fusion Confusion

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Learners are introduced to three types of energy transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation. They model the scientific process of fusion to become with the sun and how it produces energy.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Graphing the Facts

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students investigate the correlation between our planet's weather and solar activity. They analyze and discuss data regarding the solar activity cycle, graph annual precipitation and temperature averages over a period of 100 years, and...
PPT
Mr. E. Science

Stars, Galaxies and the Universe

For Students 7th - 8th Standards
It takes 225 million years for our sun to travel around the galaxy. The presentation covers astronomical units, light years, telescopes, types of stars, the life cycle of a star, and types of galaxies. This is the last lesson in a...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Story of the Solar System

For Teachers 3rd - 6th
There is more to the solar system than the typical study of the sun and planets. Launch a study of asteroids, meteoroids, and comets by watching the video The Story of the Solar System, available for purchase through this...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Reading Number Words

For Teachers 1st - 3rd
In this number words worksheet, learners read number words and match them to their numbers for numbers 1 through 20. Students do this in pictures of suns.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Make a Sundial

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Pupils explore space science by conducting a sun experiment in class. In this time telling lesson, students discuss how the sun sits in our sky at exact times each day and how astronomy is based on our perspective of the solar system....

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