Students will observe the patterns of apparent motion of the sun using simple tools.

Project in which students calculate the magnitude of lunar and solar tidal forces on the earth. They calculate the solar tidal effect relative to the lunar tidal effect and the relative solar tidal effect for spring-tide conditions.

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DATA: Planetary images and geodesy data. TOOL: UNAVCO's Jules Verne Voyager Map Server. SUMMARY: Generate maps of Earth or any of 19 other planets and moons. Save and import images into presentations or reports.

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This is an indoor and outdoor activity where students understand the distance the earth is from the sun. The students understand that the earth rotates on it's axis once in a 24 hour period thus providing us with day and night.

This is an activity on apparent sizes and apparent angles, related to understanding how distance affects what we observe in outer space (the sun, moon, stars, or planets).

This guided inquiry activity has students using models to create variations of alignment of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. By varying their arrangement, students will discover how the positions of the Earth, Moon and Sun interact, how shadows can be cast on the Moon and on the Earth, and how Earth's view of the lit portion of the Moon changes.

In this two-part example, students are given clues about properties about the terrestrial and Jovian planets respectively and asked to match up the planet with the correct equatorial radius, mean orbital velocity, and period of rotation.

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This activity is an investigation of the Earths Moon phases and its position in the sky.

Students explore for water on Mars using impact crater morphology. During this lab, students: learn to use the equation writing and graphing capabilities in Microsoft Excel, thendevelop and apply an impact crater depth-diameter relationship in an effort to constrain the depth to a possible water-rich layer beneath one or more portions of the surface of Mars!

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I usually begin with a story about lying on a cot looking up at the stars on a dark night in the mountains, seeing countless stars and the hazy Milky Way stretching across the sky. I talk about how they seem to be part of a celestial dome rising very high above me, and I note that I do not have any way to know, as I am looking at the stars above me, how far they are away from me. I talk about how ancient people used and envisioned the stars. I mention the experiment with the Hubble Space Telescope in which the "darkest" and most empty part of space was imaged, and found to contain countless distant galaxies (search on "Hubble deep field" or go to http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdf/hdf.html).
I mention that this often leads people to consider how insignificant they are in the scheme of things. My feeling is that you are only as significant (or insignificant) as your actions make you.
I then talk a bit about how we now know that "visible" matter is organized into atoms, which are very, very small. In a way, they are like the stars in that they seem to be incomprehensibly small, while stars seem to be incomprehensibly large and distant. I then pose the question, "How does the part of this world that we observe and experience on a daily basis fit into a physical reality that spans from the incomprehensibly small to the incomprehensibly large?"
I pass-out the blank worksheet "Comparison of Lengths Relevant to Our Universe" to every student, and have them organize into groups of 2-3. The task is to fill-in the exponents corresponding to 9 distances listed in a box on the page, and to locate those distances on the logarithmic scale. I give them a couple of minutes to start working with the page, and then interrupt to ask what they need help with. This usually involves determining one of the lengths involving light years on the board. I let them complete the tasks in their small groups, then I ask group representatives to call-out their results.
Working from a set of correct answers, we then discuss the scale. For example, we note that there is a greater difference (in orders of magnitude) between the size of a proton or electron versus the size of a hydrogen atom, and the height of a person and the peak elevation of Mt. Everest. It is usually noted that humans fall near the middle of the length spectrum of the universe, which was also noted by Primack and Abrams (2006). Some students place great importance on this. I tend to note that there is a practical limitation to the size of individual cells that will have predictable functions (they need to be larger than the length scale governed by quantum mechanics) and constraints on the upper size limit of organisms made of cells, which determines where we are on the scale.

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In this activity students use a simple model of the moon to do an experiment to see how impact craters are formed. The lesson worksheets are differentiated and students are put into pre-determined teams by ability to conduct the experiment.

This activity is a lab investigation where students design their own lunar phases model using household materials.

This activity is a reinforcement activity where students will make a flipbook of the lunar phases.

This is a classroom activity in which students will observe, question, and investigate the relationship between the sun and the earth and how that relationship causes day and night.

Planetary data are used to investigate and evaluate the Nebular Hypothesis.

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Utilizing online and traditional resources students will collect data on planets and moons in our solar system. Working collaboratively students will generate a spreadsheet of the data. After verifying one another's information, they will then use the spreadsheet to try and determine ways in which the Earth is unique amongst the objects in our solar system, including, but not limited to, the reasons behind Earth's ability to support life.

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In this physical geography lab, students examine the relationship between solar altitude, solar declination, and temperature regimes. Using data collected in the field, mathematical relationships, and temperature records available on the Internet, students compare the insolation and climate in their location to that of other locations.

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The students will discuss, define, and demonstrate the Earth's rotation and revolution around the sun, which models the seasons.

This activity is an observation opportunity for students to view the phases of the moon and learn that the juxtoposition of the Earth and moon dictates the appearance of the moon in the sky.

The activity is an observational lesson in the phases of the moon with an attached calendar and video links.