Week 6

 The following three questions are the big ideas for this weeks lecture. 

1. How does the phase of the moon occur?

- there are many different phases of the moon, and we can see these different phases by looking at how much of the moon is shown. This is determined by where the moon is relative to the sun and Earth. 

    The crescent moon, full moon, harvest moon. 

2. What causes the season? 

- the placement of the earth relative to the sun causes the seasons to change as we get closer or farther from the sun. 

3. What causes a lunar eclipse? 

- The earth completely aligns with the moon and the sun. This blocks the sun from being able to reflect on the moon. 

What did you learn in lab this week? 

This week in lab we started by discussing the three questions above. My group in particular looked at the last question. When creating our own model, and looked at where the moon must be located in order for the lunar eclipse to occur. Our seasons on Earth occur based on where the sun is positioned around the sun. When the Earth is tilted towards the sun, the countries/areas on the tilt are getting stronger rays from the sun. The equator is the only part of the earth that always gets a direct ray from the sun. Lastly, we learned about the difference between heliocentric understanding and geocentric understanding. Heliocentric is where the sun is the center of earths orbit. Geocentric is an old belief that the sun rotated around the Earth. 

What did you learn in Thursdays lecture? 

This week in lecture we learned about the different moon phases, and how the reflection and location of the sun and earth determine what moon phase we are shown. For example when the sun is directly above us and the moon is just rising in the east, the moon phase is a quarter moon. We also touched on the seasons, and how the earth and suns location affects the changing of seasons. Overall, we used our formative assessment questions to also help us see what content we should cover or not if we were the teachers. 

What did you learn from the press book readings? 

In this weeks press book readings we learned about the Sun, Earth, and the Moon. Similarly to lab, the press book discusses heliocentrism vs geocentrism. It also discusses the different phases of the moon including: new, crescent, quarter, gibbous, and full. Along with this I learned that the first half of this cycle is when the visible part o the moon waxes or grows smaller for the second part of the cycle. Next it discusses the equinox and the solstice, along with the different eclipses that occur.