You will now create an outline for your final assignment.
In this lesson you’ve learned about the dance moves of the sun, the Earth, and the moon: rotation and revolution. With these two motions (and sometimes a combination of them), we experience day and night, seasons, moon’s phases, eclipses, and tides. You took notes on almost every page of the lesson, and now it's time to use them, as well as any other evidence presented. You’ll compose your own multimedia project, or write a final essay, in which you describe and summarize all that celestial-dance knowledge you've collected.
As you compose your project, try to think of ways to connect, either graphically or in writing, the predictable patterns you learned about in the Moon Phases Amination. How long does each take? Which celestial objects are involved? What movements of those objects cause each pattern? Why? Consider creating an infographic or a video to describe and compare the motions that are responsible for each phenomenon.
Use Organize It to outline your ideas. You can review your notes in “My Work” as well as any of the following videos and glossary terms.
That star in the middle of our solar system is bright and hot. And the Earth’s constant movement [rotation & revolution] around it creates patterns of light and dark and heat that we can see and feel here on Earth.
The Earth’s rotation on its axis is what creates day and night. When you are on the sunny side, it’s day.
When you are on the shadow side, it’s night. Pretty straight forward, right?
But here’s the thing – Earth’s rotation on its axis isn’t straight forward– it’s tilted [23.5 degrees], and this tilt paired with its revolution around the sun is what is responsible for the seasons.
When the northern half of the world is tilted toward the sun, more hours of daylight and more intense solar radiation (heat) causes warmer temperatures up here [summer]. At the same time, down here [winter] there are shorter days and less intense solar radiation.
And because the Earth is revolving around the sun, when it makes it to the opposite side, the northern and southern hemispheres are tilted the other way [summer (southern), winter (northern)].
This revolution from one side to the other and back takes 365 rotations [days]. And in between the extremes, there are seasons of transition [fall/spring].
So as you go about your day... or night, or season you can thank this movement for your day... or night, or season.
| Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Pause/Play video playback |
| Enter | Pause/Play video playback |
| m | Mute/Unmute video volume |
| Up and Down arrows | Increase and decrease volume by 10% |
| Right and Left arrows | Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds |
| 0-9 | Fast seek to x% of the video. |
| f | Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key. |
| c | Press c to toggle captions on or off |
The moon is like a giant mirror in the sky– it is always reflecting light from the sun. But from our perspective on Earth the moon seems to change.
That’s because, as we rotate daily and revolve around the sun yearly, our moon makes a trip around us once a month. And this revolution around us is what causes the predictable patterns of reflected light and darkness on the moon that we call phases: “New” to “Full” to “New” again takes a month.
And the moon isn’t just visible at night. In fact, for much of its orbit we see it during the daytime- and that is because it is passing us on our sun side.
As it revolves around us, the moon also rotates just once on its axis. Its revolution around Earth matches its rotation. This means we only see one side of the moon but the sun gets to see its face and its –ahem– backside.
So look at the bright side, and if you can’t see it just wait awhile, and it’ll come back around.
| Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Pause/Play video playback |
| Enter | Pause/Play video playback |
| m | Mute/Unmute video volume |
| Up and Down arrows | Increase and decrease volume by 10% |
| Right and Left arrows | Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds |
| 0-9 | Fast seek to x% of the video. |
| f | Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key. |
| c | Press c to toggle captions on or off |
The movement and relative position of the Earth, sun, and moon create predictable patterns in the shadows we cast. These are called eclipses.
A lunar eclipse is when the moon is on the far side of the Earth, and we see our own shadow. A solar eclipse is when the moon is between the sun and Earth, and the moon blocks our view of the sun (the moon casts a shadow on us).
So why doesn’t an eclipse happen every month as the moon revolves around Earth? Well, contrary to every animation you’ve probably seen including this one, the moon’s revolution around Earth is tilted.
And eclipses only occur when the moon is aligned with the Earth and shadows have something to fall on. Otherwise, we go along our merry way experiencing full moons and new moons without seeing any eclipses. And when eclipses do happen, whether you see it or not depends on where you happen to be and where the shadow happens to fall.
So with all the variables at play, when you do get to see an eclipse, consider yourself at the right place at the right revolution.
| Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Pause/Play video playback |
| Enter | Pause/Play video playback |
| m | Mute/Unmute video volume |
| Up and Down arrows | Increase and decrease volume by 10% |
| Right and Left arrows | Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds |
| 0-9 | Fast seek to x% of the video. |
| f | Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key. |
| c | Press c to toggle captions on or off |
The movement and relative position of the Earth, sun, and moon create predictable patterns in the shadows we cast. These are called eclipses.
A lunar eclipse is when the moon is on the far side of the Earth, and we see our own shadow. A solar eclipse is when the moon is between the sun and Earth, and the moon blocks our view of the sun (the moon casts a shadow on us).
So why doesn’t an eclipse happen every month as the moon revolves around Earth? Well, contrary to every animation you’ve probably seen including this one, the moon’s revolution around Earth is tilted.
And eclipses only occur when the moon is aligned with the Earth and shadows have something to fall on. Otherwise, we go along our merry way experiencing full moons and new moons without seeing any eclipses. And when eclipses do happen, whether you see it or not depends on where you happen to be and where the shadow happens to fall.
So with all the variables at play, when you do get to see an eclipse, consider yourself at the right place at the right revolution.
| Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Pause/Play video playback |
| Enter | Pause/Play video playback |
| m | Mute/Unmute video volume |
| Up and Down arrows | Increase and decrease volume by 10% |
| Right and Left arrows | Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds |
| 0-9 | Fast seek to x% of the video. |
| f | Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key. |
| c | Press c to toggle captions on or off |