Teacher Resources for Instructional Planning


HS, Astronomy Std 28: Understand that common physical laws appear to apply to all bodies in the universe.

Lesson Plans: Build a Hovercraft Gravity Gauge To make a simple accelerometer to measure "G-forces" when you change your motion. Orbital Forces To demonstrate orbital motions and forces using a tennis ball swung by a ribbon. Sunspot Races After you've looked at your images, you should be able to predict when sunspot groups or active regions will disappear behind the Sun's limb and, perhaps, eventually reappear from around the back side of the Sun. Sun Activities Demonstrating Microgravity To build a microgravity demonstrator, and to experiment with microgravity. Magnetometer Students will build an instrument capable of detecting a magnetic field and magnetic polarity. Kepler's Laws By reproducing ellipses via the "string-and-pencil method," the students will draw ellipses and determine the eccentricities; by measuring the orbits of five of Jupiter's moons, the students will test Kepler's third law; and by using characteristics of Pluto's orbit, the students will confirm Kepler's second law. Asteroid Orbits To graph the locations of the Earth and asteroid orbits, and to estimate when an asteroid would cross the Earth's orbit.

Resources: Expanding Universe: Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which established the relationship between matter, space, time and gravity, governs modern cosmology's view of the universe. Acceleration in Keplerian Orbits: Kepler's laws illustrated in animation The Physics Classroom Tutorials, animations, sample problems Aeronautics Related Activities, Experiments, and Lesson Plans
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