Standard 5: Earth in Space and Time

This flyer describes how NASA partners with small businesses for research and development to further space exploration. It directly discusses the impact of research on the economy and provides specific examples of innovations that resulted from partnerships with small businesses.

Type: Image/Photograph

The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite, into space in 1957. Americans watched the Soviet satellite beeping and blinking across the American night sky. Sputnik I weighed only 184 pounds and could do little more than beep, but many people worried that this meant the United States was losing the race to develop space technology.

Pressure exploded from United States politicians and the American public demanding that the country catch up and increase investment in rocket technology and aeronautics. In this lesson students will analyze the film Florida: Moonport USA todescribe the effect of the United States space program on Florida's economy, growth and culture.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The article discusses ethical issues that may arise when humans eventually travel to and colonize other planets, especially Mars. The article anticipates many of the concerns that will need to be addressed as space colonization becomes more of a reality. This lesson includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses how scientists are mapping the dust of the Milky Way. The text describes how interstellar dust can tell astronomers where stars and planets are forming, where a supernova could have occurred and provide other clues to the history of our galaxy and its formation. Using a newly created 3-D mapping tool, astronomers hope to integrate data from this tool with data from other sources in order to learn more about our galaxy than ever before. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text resource intended to support reading in the content area. This text describes scientists' research on identifying "habitable" planets and explains how failed attempts might actually open the doors to more thorough research and understanding. Scientists faced the challenge of collecting specific data in order to determine if bodies qualified as planets. When research revealed that their original hypotheses were incorrect, scientists were able to take the new information and apply it to further investigations. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Options to extend the lesson are included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text designed to support reading in the content area. The text describes the life cycle of stars and differentiates between their various "fates" as white dwarfs, black holes, novae, etc. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses innovative research to understand why the corona is hotter than the surface of the Sun. This informational text is designed to support reading in the content area. The text describes how researchers are using the Hinode satellite from Japan to analyze data being produced from a polar coronal hole in the Sun. They believe that Alfven waves are responsible for the surprising temperature of the corona, thereby unlocking a long unanswered question in solar physics. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will create cause and effect t-shirts to relate phenomena on the sun to disruptive events that they can cause on Earth.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will explore the Big Bang Theory through academic games and a large technology-based project that accommodates all learner types, deepening their knowledge and understanding of the evidences for the Big Bang Theory.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students are guided through the stages of a star's life using interactive reading, acting out skits, classroom games, and creating their own children's comics. By the end of this lesson, all of your students will be able to determine the course of a star's life knowing it's size. Like supernovas, students will explode with excitement for this lesson!

Type: Lesson Plan

Upon completion of this lesson, students will be able to use the astronomical coordinate system of right ascension and declination to locate objects in the sky. For instance, given the values of right ascension and declination of a celestial object (a star, a galaxy, a nebula) and a labeled star chart, the students should be able to note the object's location in the sky. Additionally, students will be able to describe the location of our Solar System in relation to the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students review the conceptual basics of Newton's three laws, then use those concepts to create models and drawings to represent the Newtonian interactions between the Sun, Earth, and the Moon.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is designed to help students understand the importance of space exploration and how it affects their every day lives as Floridians. They will explore the NASA Spin-Off Website , and do research on an everyday example of technology that was developed as the result of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This lesson includes both a guided webquest and a research project.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will be introduced to various units used for measuring distances in astronomy and when to use each. This lesson will review conversions between units and using scale models.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson students will investigate the evolution of different mass stars. Students will create a poster that depicts the evolution of different size stars in order to compare life cycles.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students apply geometric measures and methods, art knowledge, contextual information, and utilize clear and coherent writing to analyze NASA space shuttle mission patches from both a mathematical design and visual arts perspective.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will act as mathematicians and scientists as they use models, observations and space science concepts to perform calculations and draw inferences regarding a fictional solar system with three planets in circular orbits around a sun. Among the calculations are estimates of the size of the home planet (using a method more than 2000 years old) and the relative distances of the planets from their sun.

Type: Lesson Plan

The Sunspot Activity Case Study is set up as a series of short activities centered around readings or graphs. Students learn about solar cycles that cause a change in the amount of solar radiation received by the Earth. Students are asked to analyze how these solar cycles might be contributing to global warming and climate change.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is a differentiated approach to the concept of Dark Energy and the distribution of matter in our Universe. Students begin by simulating the expansion of the Universe by creating balloon Universes which can be inflated. Students are then assigned one of four articles according to reading ability. They read their articles and then form Jigsaw groups to share the information gleaned from the articles. Students are assessed through a writing assignment.

Type: Lesson Plan

Every school child learns that the earth-sun distance is 93 million miles. Yet, determining this distance was a formidable challenge to the best scientists and mathematicians of the 18th and 19th centuries. The purpose of this lesson is to use the 2012 Transit of Venus as an opportunity to work through the mathematics to calculate the earth-sun distance. The only tools needed are basic knowledge of geometry, algebra, and trigonometry. The lesson is self-contained in that it includes all the data needed to work through the exercise.

Type: Lesson Plan

Through an inquiry activity students will explore the problems related to space travel. Students will design a rocket that will reach a target (Mars) using the least amount of (fuel)

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will graph distance/velocity data of real galaxies to arrive at their own value of the Hubble constant (H). Once they have calculated their own value of H, they will use it to determine distances to real galaxies with known recessional velocities.

Type: Lesson Plan

Learn to identify the properties of our dynamic and powerful Sun and explain how they create conditions and events on Earth with this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

In this video, wildland fire scientist Kevin Hiers explains how technology can be used to aid fire behavior research in fire-dependent ecosystems.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

You may know that you need to use your brain to do science, but did you know you need your ears, too?

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

(Description Needed by CL) Science and Society

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

What's the difference between 4 stroke and 2 stroke boat engines?

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

One way to figure out what something is made of is to see what kinds of wavelengths of electromagnetic energy it can absorb.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

Learn more about how splitting light beams helps researchers detect hydrogen fires for the space program.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

Creative minds will hit higher notes when they sing their science.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Teaching Idea

This site provides information on the planets, moons, and other objects in the solar system, and the space missions conducted to study them. Materials include an interactive illustration of the solar system that provides descriptions, facts, and links to resources on solar system objects, and a search tool that lets users find information about planetary and solar system missions by name, decade, target, and nation. Mission information includes a brief history, fact sheet, key dates, and links to additional information and mission-specific websites. The kids' page features interactives, activities, models to build, and a gallery of kids' art. The education page features curriculum materials and resources for museums, planetariums, and scientists. There are also news articles and event announcements, an multimedia gallery with photos, video, and interactives, and profiles of NASA scientists.

Type: Resource Collection

"These seven NASA-funded magnetism guides contain activity- or math-based lessons on magnetic fields. The science and mathematics education standards these activities cover are in the beginning of the guides... These guides were developed as part of the Education and Public Outreach programs of the following NASA science missions: STEREO-IMPACT, RHESSI, THEMIS, and FAST."

These are modules, including student worksheets, about magnetism in general and especially about the Earth's magnetic field.

Type: Resource Collection

This video provides a very complete and detailed overview of the parallax effect and how it can be used to measure astronomical distances using the tangent function. A number of student activities are presented throughout the 26 minute video, so students can have the opportunity to engage in measuring distances to stars and other local landmarks and can try making the required calculations on their own.The relevance of this concept to other fields, such as surveying, is also noted in the video.

Type: Teaching Idea

This PBS NOVA presentation discusses SETI and the history of the program to investigate the possibility that there is intelligent life in the universe beyond Earth. In this context students work with very large numbers and sampling concepts related to large systems. It discusses the Drake equation, the electromagnetic spectrum, and technology of the past and present used to search the universe for intelligent life, and the scientists who have been instrumental in this field.

Type: Teaching Idea

A timeline project tracing major evolutionary events from the formation of the universe (~15 billion years ago) through the present. Pictures and descriptions of these events are provided.

Type: Teaching Idea

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article asks the reader to ponder the ethical issues that may arise as we travel to and colonize the rocky inner planets in our solar system. The article questions what country or organization will make the guidelines that answer these ethical questions.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The article describes cosmic dust and the effects it leaves on the galaxy when it comes in contact with astronomical phenomenon. The interstellar dust can cause a distortion of astrological observations, called reddening. This can cause false data being reported because, for one, color is used to determine the age of a star. The article addresses how astronomers have produced a 3-D map of interstellar reddening for three-quarters of the visible sky.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The author describes research on identifying "habitable" planets and explains how failed attempts might actually open the doors to more thorough research. Scientists faced the challenge of collecting specific data in order to determine if readings pointed to the existence of a planet. When research revealed that their original hypotheses were incorrect, the scientists were able to take the new information and apply it to further investigations.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The text describes how researchers are using the Hinode satellite from Japan to uncover new explanations for the long-puzzled-after solution behind the searing temperature of the corona of the Sun.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article describes scientists' discovery of the oldest habitable exoplanet that has been discovered. This planet formed outside our Milky Way and is about 11.5 billion years old. The planet looks like it could support water, has a rocky terrain, and is about five times bigger than Earth. Its proximity to its red dwarf star has led scientists to believe it could have supported life at one time.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes how scientists discovered dark energy and dark matter. The article details the role gravity and the study of supernova played in this scientific discovery. It also explains the problems that scientists encountered in the process and the conclusion they were able to reach. The article further explains WIMP, a weakly interacting massive particle and its connection to gamma rays. It also explains how studying supernova helped scientists estimate the age of the universe. Finally, the article summarizes that dark energy still remains a mystery.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Researchers have found a correlation between solar wind and an increase in the number of lightning strikes near England, as much as 32% after a month-long period. They believe solar wind causes a greater number of strikes because it delivers streams of high-speed solar particles that strike Earth's atmosphere. This contrasts an earlier hypothesis that solar wind decreases lightning strikes because it deflects cosmic rays.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article describes black holes: what they are, how they are formed, where they are located, what evidence there is for their existence, and what scientists still do not know about them.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Astrophysicist David Kipping has discovered a new method for weighing distant stars without relying on computer models. For the method to work, a star must have a planet with an orbiting moon cross in front of it, a circumstance not yet known to scientists, but it shows promise for future solar discoveries.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article describes the entire range of light waves which constitute the electromagnetic spectrum. Excellent graphics aid in illustrating the differences in types of light. The article also uses the electromagnetic spectrum to explore the universe, from visible light to X-rays and gamma rays.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This text describes three kinds of solar phenomena: sunspots, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections. Each is explained in relation to its effect on the weather, climate, and technology of Earth. NASA programs that monitor the activity of the Sun are also described.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text is intended to support reading in the content area. This article explains the current prevailing theory of the Big Bang by breaking it up into a timeline. At each moment after the Big Bang, the author discusses what happened and what evidence exists for it. The text also explores the mystery of what—if anything—existed before the Big Bang.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes the methods scientists have used to discover a large range of planets that exist outside of our solar system. It then details how the technology and techniques involved in planetary identification have evolved to become more efficient. The article also explains that scientists are constantly looking for planets in a "Goldilocks Zone" that could contain liquid water, and therefore sustain life.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article highlights the dangers that solar flares pose to moon colonization and how humans might deal with them. It is a brief article that grabs the reader's attention and leaves him/her thinking.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text is intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes the history of the study of antimatter in language that is easier to understand than most technical texts.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text is intended to support reading in the content area. The article explains that astronomers are trying to find out why stars outside our galaxy are so much larger based on what we know about star formation and chemical make-up.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This text describes a large sunspot on the sun. It also briefly mentions some characteristics of the sun as well as the effects of the sunspots on earth.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article traces the evolution of the star by mass. It discusses white dwarfs, novas, supernovas, neutron stars, and black holes.

Type: Text Resource

This website is a collection of references, images, and information for general astronomy. This work covers topics from the basics of science and observation through the solar system, stars, cosmology, and telephotography. The material is clearly organized by topic using links to reference materials on the web.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article discusses how the noble gas compound was discovered along with suggestions on how it might have formed and some of its properties.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the academic content areas. It is most appropriate for 9th-10th grade students enrolled in a U.S. History or an Earth/Space Science class.

This is an interview of Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, one of the first men to walk on the moon. In a question/answer format, Aldrin answers questions about his ambitious vision for the future of American space exploration, and he also reflects on the past and present of the U.S. space program.

Type: Text Resource

The 2012 Report of the Kennedy Space Center includes significant events, engineering achievements, partnerships, environmental work, education work, and outreach. In addition, the final section includes the economic impact and work force diversity.

Type: Text Resource

This tutorial will help the learners to understand the solar system and will learn how it was discovered from the historical astronomy perspective.

Type: Tutorial

• Study the relation between the speed of light and the refractive index of the medium it passes through.
• Choose from a collection of materials with known refractive indices and obtain the speed of light as it passes through.
• Learn why light-years are used as an astronomical measurement of distance.

Type: Tutorial

This video contains a collection of the best images of the Earth taken from space in 2012

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This video provides a historical background about the definition of a planet and how different objects discovered in space were classified as planets or fir into a different category

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

A collection of crossword puzzles that test the knowledge of students about some of the terms, processes, and classifications covered in science topics

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This video lesson has the goal of introducing students to galaxies as large collections of gravitationally bound stars. It explores the amount of matter needed for a star to remain bound and then brings in the idea of Dark Matter, a new kind of matter that does not interact with light. It is best if students have had some high school level mechanics, ideally Newton's laws, orbital motion and centripetal force. The teacher guide segment has a derivation of centripetal acceleration. This lesson should be mostly accessible to students with no physics background. The video portion of this lesson runs about 30 minutes, and the questions and demonstrations will give a total activity time of about an hour if the materials are all at hand and the students work quickly. However, 1 1/2 hours is a more comfortable amount of time. There are several demonstrations that can be carried out using string, ten or so balls of a few inches in diameter, a stopwatch or clock with a sweep second hand and some tape. The demonstrations are best done outside, but can also be carried out in a gymnasium or other large room. If the materials or space are not available, there are videos of the demonstrations in the module and these may be used.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

• Observe the orbit of the earth around the sun and its relationship to seasons
• Understand the factors affecting Earth's climate
• Observe the effect of Earth's tilt on the seasons

Type: Virtual Manipulative