What causes lunar and solar eclipses?
Cycle Summary
Session
4
Elicit
Students will offer their explanations and current understanding of solar eclipses.
Engage
Students will read global historical myths regarding eclipses.
Explore
Students will use a kinesthetic model to investigate how solar and lunar eclipses occur.
Explain
Students will view a video and answer analysis questions about how solar and lunar eclipses occur.
Session
5
Elaborate
Students will research solar and lunar eclipses via webquests.
Evaluate
Students will complete an evaluation to demonstrate their understanding of solar and lunar eclipses.
Extend
Extend
Students will explore the science behind Venus’ planetary transit by calculating how often this occurrence is viewed from Earth.
Cycle 2 Resources
No Resources provided.
Cycle 2 Tutorials
In the previous cycle, students developed models of the sun-Earth-moon system to explain the cyclic patterns of moon phases on Earth.
In this cycle, students will construct an explanation that answers the guiding question: What causes lunar and solar eclipses? Students will answer this guiding question by developing models of the sun-Earth-moon system to explain cyclic patterns of solar and lunar eclipses. They use their models and obtain information from video and online resources to explain that during a solar eclipse sunlight is prevented from reaching the Earth because the moon is positioned between the sun and Earth. During a lunar eclipse, sunlight is prevented from reaching the moon because Earth is positioned between the sun and moon. Solar and lunar eclipses do not occur every time the Earth, sun, and moon align is these ways. The moon’s orbital plane is tilted with respect to the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the sun. As a result, the sun-Earth-moon system is not in perfect alignment to create lunar and solar eclipses, a majority of the time.
In the concept, students will develop and use a model to describe how gravity affects the motion of celestial objects within our solar system. They will examine the relationships between mass, distance, and gravity. Additionally, students will investigate the relationship between gravity, inertia, and the orbit of objects in space.