Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

Another good video from Veritasium to explain the phases of the moon and eclipses. Maybe stop after the people have given their explanations for the phases of the moon and ask students what they think…

(And maybe stop it yourself there too, and try and explain it, before watching the rest of the video)

And here’s some Interactives to help explain it:

Day Night Demonstrator

Manchester Childrens University

McGraw Hill

Got any other good ones? Share them in the comments below.

Jaw dropping time-lapse footage from the International Space Station

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

NASA’s 30-year Space Transportation System (STS) program came to an end on 21st July 2011. The Space Shuttle fleet delivered the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station, and dozens of satellites, space probes, crew and supplies. Two Shuttles were lost: Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. The touchdown of Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center marked the end of an era, after 135 missions. This video shows all of them in chronological order. http://www.nature.com/spaceshuttle

A compilation from the chap who made the special effects shots for the BBC Wonders of the Universe series. Good for some awe and wonder?

A Cosmological Fantasia from BDH – Burrell Durrant Hifle on Vimeo.

Solar System Scope is an amazing interactive 3D Model of our Solar System. You can zoom in and move the planets around the Sun to see how they move in relation to each other.

You can switch between an heliocentric view, geocentric view or a panoramic view of the Solar System. Earth centred view is great if you then use the play controls to move the time forwards as you can see the how day/night changes across the surface. Heliocentric view is good for showing how we get seasons as well as demonstrating the movement of the Moon around the Earth in the course of a month. The scales of the planets in relation to each other is not accurate – nor is the distance apart, but they’re necessary changes to make the whole thing fit on a screen and be useable!

Click on any planet to “visit” that planet and explore its surface – or get more information about it.

It’s a truly fabulous application -and every Science teacher should add it to their bookmarks for their next Space lesson alongside Google Moon, Mars and Sky. All of which are fantastic on an Interactive Whiteboard.

Visit it now at : http://www.solarsystemscope.com

Thanks to Stephen Baxter for tweeting the link.

Here are some examples of space shuttle/rocket launches to use as scene setters for a lesson on Space.

This is a rather amazing HD video of the Shuttle Atlantis being launched, which is just beautiful:

I also found a few videos that include the countdown, including this one of Atlantis:

And also this one that puts you in the cockpit with the astronauts before and during launch:

I also found this video montage of high resolution photographs of Apollo 11 on the moon:

All of these videos could really help to put a space lesson in context – or be the spark for some creative writing based on what they have seen. What must it be like to be in that Shuttle as it takes off? How would it feel? Where could they go once they launched? etc

A great little factsheet by neilslorance. Ask students to make their own factsheets.

If the Earth were the size of a basketball and the moon a tennis ball, how far apart would they be? Diagrams that are not to scale make us think that they’re closer than they really are.

Have a guess first. Then watch this video…

Surprised?

Now try it with your class.

Update – Awesome high-res moon image here, from Bad Astronomer.

This is the core of Comet Tempel 1 as Seen by NASA’s Stardust Probe yesterday.

NASA’s Stardust-NExT mission took this image of comet Tempel 1 at 8:39 p.m. PST
(11:39 p.m. EST) on Feb 14, 2011.

Stardust-NExT is a low-cost mission that will expand the investigation of comet Tempel 1 initiated by NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft. On 14th Feb 2011 it flew right past the comet and took some fantastic images of the nucleus of the coment.

Thr0ugh the course of today it gradually beamed those images back to earth.

This is real space science, happening right now. If you are teaching a Space topic right now, it would be great to be able to work the Stardust probe into the lesson.

For more images as they come in, check out this gallery

For more information about Stardust-NExT, visit http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov.

A question I get asked a lot. Maybe this video will help: