A kinesthetic activity that challenges students to participate in a model that describes the fate of solar energy as it enters the Earth system.  A good initial lesson for Earth’s energy budget, students unravel the benefits and limitations of their model.

In this activity, students will model  the geometry of solar eclipses by plotting a few points on a piece of graph paper, and using quarters and a nickel to represent the Sun and Moon (not to scale). 

In this lesson students will calculate the size to distance ratio of the Sun and the Moon from Earth to determine how a solar eclipse can occur.

In this activity students will examine NASA data to determine the differences between a solar and lunar eclipse.

In this activity, students will analyze past and future eclipse data and orbital models to determine why we don’t experience eclipses every month.

Examine (daytime) surface temperature and solar radiation received at locations found near similar latitudes using NASA Data.

In this StoryMap lesson students will learn how living with a star can teach us about our universe. Through a series of learning activities, students will examine the benefits and hazards of living with a star, describe and/or demonstrate how we use eclipses to study the Sun and its features, and investigate how our Sun may be used to learn about other stars and our universe. 

Students will examine air temperature data collected through The GLOBE Program during the 2017 US solar eclipse.

Students construct explanations about Earth’s energy budget by connecting a model with observations from side-by-side animations of the monthly mapped data showing incoming and outgoing shortwave radiation from Earth’s surface.

Students review a visualization showing a global view of the top-of-atmosphere longwave radiation from January 26 and 27, 2012. They review the supporting text and analyze the data in the visualization to answer questions.