This activity helps students begin to experience the scale of the solar system. Students will discover how immense the sun is and how far away it is compared to the size of the Earth and the distance to the moon. For example, they will see how the entire Earth-Moon system could fit inside the Sun with plenty of room to spare. The instructions explain how to construct the model using 52 students representing ... Full description.

Meteorites are rocks, but they are not like Earth rocks. Most are far older, and they provide some of the only samples we have of other worlds - other planets, asteroids and possibly comets - in our solar system. Some meteorites even contain tiny particles that formed around other stars that existed before our Sun. The site has information on the appearance and composition of meteorites and explains ... Full description.

In this lesson plan, students explore how the universe has evolved since the theoretical Big Bang and create dramatizations of various eras in cosmic evolution. This page provides objectives, resources/materials, a related article and timeline, activities, follow-up questions, evaluation ideas, vocabulary, interdisciplinary connections, and links to additional information. Full description.

In this activity, students use a variation of the method of measuring the diameter of the Sun that utilizes the same principle involved in making a pinhole camera. They substitute a masked mirror for the pinhole and a darkened room for the box. The advantage of this technique is that the Sun's image is cast over a greater distance, thus enlarging the image. Because the experiment is done in a darkened ... Full description.

Galileo used his telescope to gather data about the heavens, and his observations and theories sparked much controversy. This video segment discusses Galileo's observations of sunspots, which challenged the current church doctrine that celestial objects were pristine and unblemished, and even demonstrated that the sun rotated. The segment is three minutes forty-two seconds in length. A background ... Full description.

This lesson plan is part of the Center for Educational Resources (CERES), a project where a team of master teachers, university faculty and NASA researchers have created a series of web-based astronomy lessons. In this lesson students compare real-time Earth and Mars measurements for temperature, wind speed, humidity and atmospheric pressure. They then compare the two planets weather patterns. This ... Full description.

Here students can click on thumbnail photographs of the planets and get a larger view plus several facts about it. This site also has an interactive quiz about the planets. Full description.

This lesson introduces students to planetary research. Using some of the most famous and interesting images of the Solar System, students learn to focus on details by studying uncaptioned images. They increase their knowledge of the planets and their features by comparing their observations to those of real researchers. Students organize their findings to infer a key difference between inner and outer ... Full description.

This educational game reviews concepts learned during an astronomy or space science unit. It can be adapted to any material and any curriculum. The game serves as a motivational tool to enhance enjoyment of reviewing concepts. The site includes instructions for the game and sample questions about the Earth, the sun, other planets, and constellations along with some questions called potpourri. Full description.

This lesson plan is part of the DiscoverySchool.com lesson plan library for grades 6-8. It focuses on the history of the Earth from 4.6 billion years ago to the present. Students look at different time periods and major events in the Earth's history, putting it all together in a classroom display. Included are objectives, materials, procedures, discussion questions, evaluation ideas, suggested readings, ... Full description.