Star Light, Star Bright : Exploring How Stars Are Classified

Young scholars view artwork and navigate the Internet, and read books to learn about the Aurora Borealis.  For this Northern Lights lesson, students complete a KWL and separate the facts from the myths about the Northern lights. Young...

For this star classification worksheet, students are given laminated star charts to make observations about stars. They work in groups to classify groups of stars based on different characteristics. For each group of stars they list at...

Eighth graders differentiate apparent magnitude and absolute magnitude scales. In this astronomy lesson, 8th graders rank stars in terms of its brightness as observed from Earth. They explain what a light year is in their own words.

A fabulous presentation on light is here for you. In it, learners view slides which cover many important concepts of light. They understand exactly what light is, what the main sources of light are, what opaque, transparent, and...

Beam me up, Bill! Explore how beams of light behave when they strike flat and curved surfaces. Bill bends light using a nifty contraption that streams three beams through a straight and a curved piece of plastic. He also defines and...

Are vaccines protection from infection — or are they risky business? Learners weigh the pros and cons in a short, animated video. The narrator discusses the many illnesses eradicated through world-wide use of vaccines and sheds light on...

Star light, star bright ... just how long can you wish on that star? Well, it depends on its mass. The presentation explains the life cycle of stars based on their sizes. Scholars learn about the life expectancy of a star based on the...

Do you know why stars twinkle? You will after watching this clip from "Tell Me Why." A top astronomer explains that stars twinkle because of the earth's imperfect atmosphere. Each imperfection or irregularity cause the light from the...

Can you eyes be fooled into seeing colors that aren't actually there? Budding scientists view a presentation that addresses this topic. They explore how their eyes interpret color through the retinas and messages sent to the brain. They...

Any work with light, lenses, lasers, or mirrors is called optical engineering. Optical engineers bend and bounce light to make it useful for humans. Examples are telescopes, invisibility, nanomedicine, and solar energy. This...