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.

This hands-on activity is the construction of an extended coverage area of eclipse glasses to provide extra protection for safely viewing a solar eclipse. This makes it harder to look outside the lenses on the eclipse glasses.

In this activity, learners will explore an additional tool used to observe the Sun’s atmosphere, called a coronagraph. Learners will create a flipbook of a coronagraph showing a coronal mass ejection.

Learners will build a 2D model of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Spacecraft model. 

Using a “fun-size” bag of rainbow bite-sized candies learners will place different colored candies on a diagram of the Sun-Earth system to show different space weather conditions during solar minimum and solar maximum.

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). 

This activity invites students to model and observe the effect of melting ice sheets (from land) on sea level and the difference between the effect of melting sea-ice to that of melting land ice on sea level.

This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.

Students use Phytopia: Exploration of the Marine Ecosystem, a computer-based tool, to investigate various phytoplankton species and topics relating to phytoplankton biology. 

Guided by the 5E model, this lesson allows students to work together to uncover how changes in sea ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic regions are connected to Earth’s energy budget.