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This is a poster about radiation in space. Learners can read about the Van Allen belts and how NASA's Van Allen Probes are investigating the influence of the Sun's energy on Earth. The activity version also includes math problems, a vocabulary... (View More) matching game, a communication research challenge, and a toolbox of web resources. (View Less)
This activity is an interactive word find game with words related to comets and NASA's Comet Nucleus Sample Return mission. Accompanying text and pictures describe what comets are and why we are interested in them.
This is an online interactive about asteroid composition. Learners will explore how scientists learn about the composition of an asteroid by studying energy and neutrons that emanate from it. Includes audio (and transcription) explaining the diagram.
This activity is related to the discovery of water ice on Mars. Learners are provided with a global map showing where the presumed water ice is located and use it as context for analyzing and interpreting images taken with the Thermal Emission... (View More) Imaging System (THEMIS) aboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. They will use the water ice maps to interpret the geology of the regions on Mars and evaluate the prospects for exploring these regions in the future. A teacher guide and a student guide are available. This is an extension of the "Mars Image Analysis Activity" and is activity 5 of 5 in Buried Water Ice on Mars. (View Less)
This activity introduces the importance of meteorites to the understanding of the origin of the Solar System. Learners will use a key to determine if samples are meteorites. Finding meteorites can be difficult because most meteorites look like Earth... (View More) rocks to the casual or untrained eye. Even to the trained eye, recognizing meteorites can be difficult. Since scientists believe that some meteorites are pieces of the asteroid Vesta, they may be very old remnants of the solar system in its earliest stages. This activity provides information and insight that allows participants to share scientists' expectations, based on meteoritic samples, of what we will find when the NASA's Dawn Mission visits Vesta and Ceres. (View Less)
This is a kinesthetic activity about the rotation of the Moon. Learners act out the rotation and revolution motions of Moon around the Earth to illustrate that the Moon rotates once in the same amount of time as it orbits the Earth once, called... (View More) synchronous rotation. This is Actividad 1.5 of the Spanish-language El Universo as sus Pies, which is available for purchase. (View Less)
This is an activity about using large numbers in astronomy. Learners will first estimate how long it would take to count to a billion, if it was a full-time job. Then, they will judge their estimates using a calculator to get a more definitive... (View More) answer. Finally, they will calculate the time or speed needed to travel to the star, Proxima Centauri. This is Activity M-7 of Universe at Your Fingertips 2.0: A Collection of Activities and Resources for Teaching Astronomy DVD-ROM, which is available for purchase. (View Less)
This is an activity about lunar magmatic differentiation, in which learners simulate the process of geological differentiation. The activity ends with an extension question that asks about the makeup of the highlands of the Moon. This activity is in... (View More) Unit 2 of the Exploring the Moon teacher's guide and is designed for use especially, but not exclusively, with the Lunar Sample Disk program. (View Less)