ESL students often respond particularly well to a good scientific model and demonstration because they can frame the ideas mentally in their native language first, then acquire the proper English vocabulary right along with everyone else in the classroom. Understanding a scientific model physically and kinesthetically often comes before a proper description exists in the language of mathematics or English. ![]() It helps us ask (and answer!) questions in a kinesthetic way – even before we have the vocabulary and conceptual understanding to frame these questions properly in English! Playing with scientific models is important.If the model is robust, it will be able to answer questions and respond to challenges if it is not, then it must be changed, or even discarded all together! In fact, to be good scientists, we must challenge every idea and scientific model. Science has no sacred ideas that cannot be challenged. When we build on and improve a scientific model, we partake in a tradition of scientific inquiry that is literally thousands of years old.We will learn that by improving a scientific model, we can begin to answer the Why does that happen? and How does it work? questions – not just the What happens next? questions.What will your students learn about science? We will discover both that it is true, and more importantly, why it happens. This unique fact will be explored in several upcoming activities.We can only see one side of the Moon from Earth (the near side), in order to see the far side, we must physically travel through space.Be patient, this fact will be much easier to see in one of our later activities than it is to explain now! This means it takes more than 24-hours from one moonrise to the next, and the Moon rises about 50 minutes later each day. Because the Earth is spinning as the Moon orbits our planet, our Earth must turn more than 360 o each day before we can see the Moon again.Unlike our consistent sunrise and sunset, the time of moonrise and moonset changes by about an hour each night.We can see this eastward movement of the Moon from here on Earth, but we must watch the Moon carefully over several nights to observe it! This is the Moon’s true orbital motion which is in the opposite direction of the east to west apparent motion that we see each night.The Moon moves from West to East as it orbits the Earth in space.This east to west motion is called apparent motion, it is caused by the speedy rotation of the Earth on its axis and it is not actually how the Moon moves through space as it orbits the Earth.The Moon crosses the sky from East to West each night.When we use a 12-inch vinyl playball as the Earth and a rubber T-ball as the Moon, the diameter of the lunar orbit is 60 feet! Almost every diagram of the Earth and Moon depicted in textbooks is wildly out of scale.The scale of the Earth-Moon system is enormous!.Awareness of how scientists present models will help your students interpret, and understand these models better! It is a wonderful experience to introduce the student to the vastness of space, but just as importantly, we must dig deeper and draw the student’s attention to the compromises that scientific models make. ![]() ![]() This will certainly be the first true-to-scale model of the Earth-Moon system your students have seen. Unfortunately, when we become used to the compromises – and no one tells us about them – we come to think of these things as facts. Some of these compromises are deliberate, others are out of ignorance. Your first reaction might be: “Those models lie!” In fact, almost every scientific model makes many compromises and simplifications. You could draw or construct such models to correct scale, but the drawing on your page would show an Earth no larger than a BB, and the Moon would be a single speck on the page. Physical models of the Earth and Moon system have to be made compact enough to fit on a desk top. In spite of the model being of great size, the materials for the model will fit into a single grocery bag – it turns out that the Earth-Moon system is mostly empty space! This vast amount of space compared to the relatively small Earth and Moon is one of the main things that your students will learn about.ĭiagrams of the Earth and Moon in a textbook have to be compressed to fit on a single page. This model of the Earth-Moon system is one of the largest models we will construct in this book – in fact, the completed model is approximately 60 feet in diameter, perfect for an outdoor activity!
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