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Fraknoi, Andrew and Schatz, Dennis (eds), [link.Fraknoi, Andrew (ed), 1995, The Universe at Your Fingertips: An Astronomy Activity and Resource Notebook : The Astronomical Society of the Pacific, San Francisco.They are aimed at K-12 teachers, but are also very useful for college professors. The following reasonably-priced, thick (400 and 180 sheets, respectively) loose-leaf notebooks contain a wealth of classroom-tested hands-on activities, resource listings, and teaching suggestions for teaching astronomy. You may also need to remind students to refer to their notes and observations of the moon as they try to figure out which way the moon revolves around Earth. As students strive to answer the questions in this activity, they may revert back to their prior misconceptions and may need to be reminded and helped to use the polystyrene ball to model and visualize the questions. For example, most students believe that the moon revolves around Earth from east to west and that its phases are caused by Earth's shadow. Celebrate that moment with the students and, as appropriate, remind them of it as they work through the rest of the activity, which can be frustrating because it requires students to do a lot of 3-D visualization and to confront their misconceptions. Students (and instructors) love the "Aha!" moment, early in the activity, when they can see the moon's phases on the polystyrene ball. Any whole-class discussion would require additional time. This activity can be completed in two hours. Explain why eclipses don't happen every month.Demonstrate what causes lunar and solar eclipses.Demonstrate why we always see the same side of the moon (the face side of the "man in the moon").State which way the moon revolves around Earth and describe a method for figuring this out.Given a diagram showing any possible set of relative positions of Earth, the moon and the sun, determine the name of the moon phase and draw what the moon would look like in that phase.Given a drawing or photograph of the moon in any phase, be able to correctly name that phase and draw a diagram showing the relative positions of Earth, the moon and the sun for that phase.Demonstrate and illustrate how the relative positions of the sun, Earth and moon cause the phases of the moon as seen from Earth.The specific content learning objectives are:
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In this activity, students confront their misconceptions about eclipses and lunar phases, come to understand the true causes of these phenomena, practice using simple physical models to solve problems, and develop their 3-D visualizations skills.
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