Students will use a model of the solar system to demonstrate rotation, revolution, kepler’s laws, Newton's laws, precession, nutation, seasons or tides.
In this activity students download sunrise and sunset data along with moon phase data and graph these data sets together in a spreadsheet in order to visualize the cycles of the seasons and the moon.
This website demonstrates how seasons work at the North Pole.
Students will use cospace app to first show Newton’s laws and then to develop their own virtual solar system that expresses all of earth’s motions.
Students investigate the effects of distance and angle on the input of solar radiation at the Earth's surface, the role played by albedo, and the heat capacity of land and water.
In this lesson, students demonstrate that it is the tilt of Earth's axis that causes the seasons.
This resource supports English language development for English language learners. This resource provides background and additional resources about tides and what causes them.
In this activity, students will investigate how the tilt of Earth's axis determines the cycle of seasons.
The NAAP Motions of the Sun Lab reviews some of the material from the Basic Coordinates and Seasons Lab and The Rotating Sky Lab and adds information to put all the pieces together for a more complete description of the motions of the sun. Computation of meridional altitude and stellar visibility are also introduced.
This simulation explores the sun/Earth connection. It allows variables to be manipulated such as time of year, latitude, angle, annalema, and declination, in teaching seasons.
This interactive shows the position of the sun, relative to Earth, as it moves through space.
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Students will review global visualizations of incoming sunlight and surface temperature and discuss seasonal change.
Students explain the apparent motion of the sun through the sky on an average day and how this relates to seasonal differences in length of daylight.
This video explains the Sun's analemma - the "figure 8" pattern that would result if we could take a picture of the sky at the same time every day for an entire year.
In this Science Update, learn how the earth got tilted on its axis. Audio and transcript versions are available. Supplemental resources, including a background essay and discussion questions, are also provided.
This activity allows students to explore tides and practice answering questions about them.
This encyclopedia entry is for the term "tide." The regular rise and fall of the ocean?s waters are known as tides. Along coasts, the water slowly rises up over the shore and then slowly falls back again. Text for this entry is appropriate for the middle and high school grade levels.