Moon Activity

Problem- What causes the phases of the Moon?

1.       In your model, what represents earth? The sun? The moon?

The big ball represents the Earth, the flashlight represents the Sun, and the small ball represents the Moon.

2.       Refer back to your 8 circles. How much of the lighted parts of ball did you see when facing the lamp?

The only lighten up part of the moon when facing the lamp was the half of the moon we cannot see.   When this happen  a new moon occurs.

3.

4.       How much of the lightened part of the ball you see depends on where the moon is in the sky.

For example, in the waxing crescent which is the name of one of the stages of the moon, what happens in this stage is from earth you can see less than half of the moon in the sky.   It literally looks like the letter C.  Another example is when you see the whole moon that is a full moon.

5.  Half of the Earth’s surface is always lit up besides when it is a new moon.  No, the darkness  on   the moon is not caused by an eclipse it is just a new moon.

6.  I think this activity went well and I understood it much more than our last activity. I think having the visual helps us understand the concept much better than just drawing it in our notebook. Now I think I know much more about the Moon than I did previously.  I think that a disadvantage of to the models is that we mess around a lot with the light and with the balls and it might take longer for us to complete the activity.

 7. Below it a little visual of what we did in class