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Formative Assessment: The Moon & Stars Phases of the Moon

The Moon orbits around Earth once every 28 days, or about once a month. Depending on where the Moon is in its orbit, it appears different from Earth. However, everyone on Earth sees the same phase of the Moon on the same day.

The image, below, shows the Moon’s phases.

Where are the Moon, Sun, and Earth in relation to each other for the different Moon phases?

For further explanation of the Moon’s phases, watch the following video.

Video credit: “The Moon” by Khan Academy is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Note: All Khan Academy content is available for free at khanacademy.org.

Characteristics of the Moon

• Distance from Earth: 239,000 miles
• Size: As seen in the image, below, the Moon is about 1/4 the size of Earth.

• Composition:
  • Very similar to Earth
  • Has an iron core, mantle, and crust
• Surface: The Moon’s rocky surface is covered in dormant volcanoes and craters which are the results of impacts from meteorites and asteroids over billions of years. The Moon is covered with craters for two reasons:
  1. It does not have an atmosphere to protect it from the impact of objects such as asteroids in space.
  2. There is no wind on the Moon to erode existing craters.
• Climate: The Moon has no atmosphere, wind, or weather. Thus, the temperature can range from extremely hot to extremely cold since there is no atmosphere to protect it from the Sun’s heat or insulate the surface.
• Gravity: Remember, more mass=more gravity and less mass=less gravity. As such, the Moon has 1/6 of the gravity of Earth. This means if you weigh 60 lbs on Earth, you would weigh 10 lbs on the Moon.
  • The Moon’s gravity, although weaker than Earth’s gravity, has enough pull to move water. This is what causes tides on Earth. As Earth rotates on its axis, the area on the near side of the Moon feels its gravity. As seen in the image below, this causes the water on that side–as well as the opposite side of Earth–to bulge out and create a high tide. As Earth continues to rotate, the gravitational pull weakens and the water recedes, creating a low tide. Since Earth completes one full rotation on its axis each day, most areas have two high tides and two low tides per day.

Sides of the Moon

There are two sides of the moon: the near side (the side we can see from Earth) and the far side (also known as the dark side). The Moon does not create its own light; it gets light from the Sun. As such, the dark side is not actually dark–it is just called the dark side because we cannot see it from Earth.

Since Earth has a larger mass, it exerts a stronger gravitational pull on the Moon. Earth’s pull controls the Moon’s orbit so that the Moon rotates once on its axis in the same amount of time it takes to orbit Earth. Therefore, the same side of the Moon is always facing Earth and we have a near side and a dark side. This effect is called tidal locking.

Click this link to see an animation of how tidal locking works as the Moon orbits Earth.

Sputnik and the Space Race

On October 4th, 1957 the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, into Earth’s orbit.  This successful launch of Sputnik sparked the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States. These two countries competed to get the first human to land on the Moon.

On January 31, 1958, the United States launched Explorer 1, a satellite that discovered the magnetic radiation belts around Earth. That same year, the United States created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In 1959, the Soviet Union launched Luna 2, the first spacecraft to land on the Moon. In April 1961, the Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space when he orbited Earth. Shortly after, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space in May 1961.

The Space Race heated up and President John F. Kennedy claimed that the United States would put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. In 1962, American astronaut John Glenn successfully orbited the Earth. In 1968, American mission Apollo 8 orbited the Moon. Finally, in 1969, the American mission Apollo 11 successfully landed the first two people on the Moon: astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Women and Space

Traditionally, the story of the Space Race features male scientists and astronauts. However, women have played a key role in the history of American space exploration. NASA mathematicians Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan along with engineer Mary Jackson were key members of the team that launched John Glenn into space in 1962. In addition to this mission, these women had long careers at NASA. Their stories have recently been popularized in the movie Hidden Figures.

Initially, women were seen to have a physical advantage as astronauts; they tend to be lighter, shorter, and consume less food. In 1960, astronaut Jerrie Cobb had logged twice as many flying hours as John Glenn. But NASA made a requirement that astronauts had to be military pilots, a job only men could have. A group of 13 female astronauts, including Cobb, was gathered and subjected to the same tests as the male astronauts. The women passed all of the tests, and in many cases, performed better than the men. Still, NASA refused to support the female astronauts. In 1983, Sally Ride became the first female astronaut in space.

NGSS

Performance Expectations

DCI

First Grade

ESS1.A: The Universe and its Stars

• Patterns of the motion of the sun, moon, and stars in the sky can be observed, described, and predicted. (1-ESS1-1)

Fifth Grade

ESS1.B: Earth and the Solar System

• The orbits of Earth around the sun and of the moon around Earth, together with the rotation of Earth about an axis between its North and South poles, cause observable patterns. These include day and night; daily changes in the length and direction of shadows; and different positions of the sun, moon, and stars at different times of the day, month, and year. (5-ESS1-2)

Middle School

ESS1.A: The Universe and Its Stars

• Patterns of the apparent motion of the sun, the moon, and stars in the sky can be observed, described, predicted, and explained with models. (MS-ESS1-1)

ESS1.B: Earth and the Solar System

• The solar system consists of the sun and a collection of objects, including planets, their moons, and asteroids that are held in orbit around the sun by its gravitational pull on them. (MS-ESS1-2),(MS-ESS1-3)
• This model of the solar system can explain eclipses of the sun and the moon. Earth’s spin axis is fixed in direction over the short-term but tilted relative to its orbit around the sun. The seasons are a result of that tilt and are caused by the differential intensity of sunlight on different areas of Earth across the year. (MS-ESS1-1)

Crosscutting Concepts

Patterns

• Patterns in the natural world can be observed, used to describe phenomena, and used as evidence. (1-ESS1-1),(1-ESS1-2)

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            Connections to Nature of Science

Scientific Knowledge Assumes an Order and Consistency in Natural Systems

• Science assumes natural events happen today as they happened in the past. (1-ESS1-1)
• Many events are repeated. (1-ESS1-1)

Lesson ideas:

Take children outside to see the Moon in the daytime. Show them how to observe the Moon, and keep a Moon journal, and encoruage them to look for the Moon day and night. Look at your Moon journal to see what the patterns are.

Try to recreate what they see outside with the Earth Sun Moon system.