Take a journey through the universe to learn about three planets that are mysteries to scientists—because they shouldn't be able to exist! Class members watch a short video to learn about Kepler-78b, Kepler-10c, and HD 106906b, three planets that are hundreds of light years away from earth, and whose unconventional compositions make them enigmas to astronomers.

Concepts

astronomy, exoplanets, the solar system, space exploration, planets

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Additional Tags

science

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Instructional Ideas

• Assign the video for homework in a flipped classroom activity, encouraging learners to take notes on what they learned for a discussion in class the next day
• Have small groups choose one of the exoplanets to study and report on to the rest of the class
• Use in an earth science or astronomy class

Classroom Considerations

• Video moves quickly, which may make it engaging for some learners but difficult to follow for others; consider showing the video more than once

Pros

• An interesting addition to a space science unit about planetary composition
• Provides helpful graphics and captions
• Video comes with an assessment to check for understanding, as well as additional links about planets in the universe

Cons

• None