New Unit--Astronomy!

For the next month we will be studying the Solar System. The first topic will be planetary motion including orbiting, revolution, rotation, equinoxes, and solstices. Also, we will be discussing why days and seasons occur on Earth.

I would like to encourage adults to take their students out on clear nights to look up at the night sky to see the stars and pose questions about what is out beyond our planet. There is a free app for smart phones called google sky map. Just go to your market for apps and you should be able to download it. I don't know if there is a version for ipods or ipod touch. If you find one, let me know so I can notify others.

If you have a recent version of Google Earth on your desktop, you may already have a "sky" button that can show the stars, planets, and galaxies.

The application below is from http://phet.colorado.edu . It is a model of how various celestial bodies revolve around each other in different situations.