And so it has come time to reflect on our groups progress in moon blogging. Our aim was to together gain a better understanding of the moon, following the sequence of the 5 Es: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate.

During the Engagement stage, we observed the moon at night and in pairs messaged each other about what we saw, our thoughts, our questions, our predictions. The Explore stage began when we started this blog. We expressed our prior knowledge and continued our observations and questions.

We were able to Explain a whole deal once we researched various sources around the internet, managing to answer each others’ questions and our own. Not everyone in the group was entirely happy with their level understanding, though.

In the Elaborate stage, we were required to get together and make our own model of the Moon. We struggled to find times where we were all free, and failed. In the end, we resorted to individually making models in our own time with the intent to compare and contrast them and their usefulness. I happily uploaded photographs of mine, but the rest of the group have yet to upload theirs.

Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed making and photographing my model, and though I personally had no misunderstandings mended, I felt this experience really consolidated what I already knew. On the other hand, perhaps had we managed to get together and make the model as a team, I may have had some of my ideas proven wrong and learned something new.

The problem with doing something on your own is that you have no one else to bounce your ideas off of, or give you a hand if you are struggling with something. I really do prefer the social nature of working as a team, rather than the single-mindedness of working on ones own (though there a lot of merit in individual thought as well).

Lastly we attended Dr Toscano’s lectures on the moon, and he demonstrated various aspects using models and some really cool software (which I was particularly interested in). This further consolidated my understandings and also convinced me that I could never underestimate the power of technology to help convey an idea.

Hopefully that helped sort out everyone’s understandings. Unfortunately, our group coherence was not the best, and I cannot honestly say that I know for sure everyone is now content with this experience. However, I can see how effective such an activity can be when done properly.

Working and talking together in a social situation has been proven time and time again to be a very effective learning strategy. Also, the order of activities was very helpful because it had a logic to it - why, for instance, should we expect students to get involved with a topic unless they are engaged first?

Furthermore, models clearly have a place in teaching all kinds of concepts (not just Science), for people learn best from doing. And the very act of giving people time to absorb information before they need to respond will always be welcomed in a world where everything seems so rushed and people feel forced to know things now! now! now!

So in the end, I at least got a lot out of this activity, and the rest of our group ought to have as well (though as I said before, I cannot be sure of this).

I took this picture the other morning, it being in the West at the time. That night it was in the East - I knew that the moon could be seen in different parts of the sky, but this is the first time I was actually conscious of it! Quite pretty, too - pity the power line is in the way!

Here are my model pictures as promised earlier this evening. I decided the clear moon came up better without the newspaper, as you can see. Everything you see here was done on Photoshop with the photos I took last night. You’ll notice I’ve changed the colour, brightness and contrast levels of most of the views from Earth.

I didn’t do all the phases (I didn’t do the Waning Gibbous or the Waxing Crescent) and the phases I have done are not completely accurate… but you get the main ideas!

Anyways, that’s my model. Aspects that can be covered by one or all of us: a more accurate depiction of the moon’s 8 phases, the moon in daylight, views from both hemispheres and eclipses, as well as the moon’s ‘rise’ and ’set’, the fact we always see the same side of the moon, the moon’s orbit (eclipses don’t always happen) - and there are likely to be more…

I’d love to see what you all come up with - maybe try to find different ways of getting the right ideas across (with as much accuracy as suitable). This way we can all compare and contrast and work out the positives and negatives of using each model for teaching different concepts!

So, again, good luck everyone on placement, I’ll see you in a few weeks

Jacky

Since I posted yesterday, I went home and with the aid of my boyfriend took lots of photos of my model. As I said earlier, it is a simple model - a world globe with a cue ball. I decided against using accurate distances, for the Earth and Moon would not then be so easy to photograph.

The ’sunlight’ I used came from my bedside lamp (minus the lampshade) because the torch I was going to use produced such a feeble little beam. The lamp actually produced too much light - it would have worked better if it produced a beam of light. Perhaps next time I would try making a lampshade that had a gap in one section (which would then cause a more linear beam of light).

I did not want to actually hold the moon in my hand the whole time so I placed it in a see-through plastic bag and bound it so the ball shape was very visible - this way I could control it without it looking like there was a massive hand holding the moon! Because the plastic was of course reflecting the light, I had to turn the flash off my camera so the shading would come up.

I also took photos of the moon covered in newspaper (instead of the clear plastic). I thought that in some cases, the light would have shown up better on this texture than the plastic.

I took photos of the moon orbiting the Earth, both from our perspective here on Earth, and from someone in outer space. I managed get a few good pictures of different phases as well as eclipses (though the solar eclipses turned out better than the lunar ones).

One photo catches the Earth and moon in such a position as to prove that the moon can be seen during daylight in some instances. Also, I was able to demonstrate the view of the moon from one hemisphere and then the other (in one case the newspaper text was upside-down).

Seeing I have so many photos to post, I’ll put them into a separate blog entry…

Jacky

Hi girls,

Jessica and I got together today briefly to discuss our model-making. It’s clear that none of us a free to meet at the same times and same places - it’s just not going to work. So we have made an executive decision.

Instead of getting together to make one model, we’ll compromise by each making our own models at home, photographing them and posting them on here so we can all discuss and make comparisons.

You can be as simple or elaborate as you like about this - you can go to the trouble of using plasticine/foam balls/papier mache, or you could simply look around your home for objects (balls etc) and use those instead. I think some good things to demonstrate would be the different phases of the moon, proving the moon can sometimes be seen in daylight, perhaps an eclipse or two etc. Use your model to work out/prove anything you have discussed in the blog…

I looked in my readings from Science & Technology 1 (1st year), and found a table listing the sun, planets and some moons, their distance from the object they are orbiting, and the radius (i.e. indicating size) and mass of each (not listed here):

Sun - has a radius of 697 000 km
Earth - has a radius of 6378 km and is 149 600 000 km away from the Sun.
Moon - has a radius of 1738 km and is 384 000 km away from the Earth.

So from this I’ve worked out that:

• the Sun is roughly 109.28 x the size of the Earth
• the Earth is about 3.669 X the size of the Moon

For my model, I’ll be using the cue ball (from a billiards table) as the moon, and either a basketball or my mum’s world globe as the Earth. I figure from my calculations that it would be impractical to involve a model of the sun because in relation to the world globe and cue ball, the sun will need to be roughly 1.2 Metres in diameter… and about 257.6 Metres away from the Earth. So, instead I will use my torch as a source of ’sunlight’.

• the distances can be worked out this way:
  • Divide the actual radius of the moon (in cm) by the radius of your model of the moon (in cm). This should give you a value with which to work out the distances for your model. (e.g. the moon’s real radius is 1738 km,= 173 800 000 cm. My moon, the cue ball, has roughly a 3cm radius. 173800000/3= 57933333.33333̷
  • Now divide each real distance by the value that you have obtained above:
    Distance from Earth to Moon is 384000 km (38 400 000 000 cm) in real life. The distances between the model Earth and Moon will roughly equal 384000 km divided by the value above.
    e.g. the distance between my Earth and Moon will be about 38400000000/57933333.33= 662.8 cm= about 6.6 m

Hmm.. Okay well it looks like if we wanted to be accurate, the cue ball would have to be more than 6 metres away from the basketball/world globe - which of course will not be so easy to photograph. Therefore I will create an inaccurate model. I’ll stick with the relative sizes, though.

Good luck with the models girls, and good luck with your placements!

See you when we get back,

Jacky

By just asking questions in google, I came up with some reasonable, feasible answers to a few things I was unsure of in earlier blogs:

Why does the Moon appear to turn Red?
My suspicions were confirmed, here: when the earth is in the way between the sun and the moon (i.e. lunar eclipse), the sunlight cuts through the Earth’s atmosphere before landing on the moon. The particles in the Earth’s atmosphere refract the light so it gives off a reddish colour.

Why does the Moon appear to turn Yellow?
This happens more often than the Red colouring (lunar eclipses are not common), and I’ve often heard it called the ‘Harvest Moon’ - this is because it is said to happen a lot during Autumn (i.e. when farmers are harvesting food for the coming winter). But I was never sure about the reasons of the yellow moon.

According to Tom Stickel at this Q&A page http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2000-05/957441306.As.r.html, it’s more to do with how close the moon is to the horizon. As we know, when a sun sets, it gets red/orange-y - again this is to do with how our atmosphere scatters the white light of the sun - by the time it reaches us, the other colours that make up white light have been deflected, leaving only reds, oranges and yellows). It’s the same with the moon: The closer the moon is to the horizon, the yellower/oranger/redder it can get.

It can happen any time of the year, which means that it doesn’t just happen in autumn; ‘harvest moon’ must either be a misnomer or people really believed that it only happened during harvest time.

Why and how does the moon effects the Earth’s tides?
I figured this had something to do with gravitational pulls, but got stuck when I realised that the Earth’s gravity is surely stronger than the Moon’s - otherwise, how is the moon orbiting us in the first place?

So I decided to poke about on the internet again… And it is apparently a lot more complex than I expected! here is part of an explanation from the this site http://www.amelianow.com/fall02-tides.htm :

“Earth’s tides are produced by the gravitational attractions of the moon and sun. Although the moon is millions of times smaller than the sun, its proximity to the earth gives it a tidal influence more than twice the sun’s. Opposing the direct gravitational forces are centrifugal forces which produce a tidal bulge on the side of the earth away from the moon, resulting in two high tides per day for most locations.”

Now, I know a centrifuge is some sort of scientific instrument that spins substances really fast and this spinning causes changes in the substance in some way. So I’m taking an educated guess that ‘centrifugal forces’ are the forces caused by spinning. Therefore I think what the above paragraph is saying is that the tides are caused by both the gravitational forces of the moon and sun, which then are counteracted by the forces caused by the earth’s constant spinning.

The page goes into more detail than this, but I’m satisfied enough with what I’ve noted here (otherwise I think I’m just going to addle my brain!).

Right, now that I’ve sorted those points out… What other things haven’t we satisfactorily answered yet?

I decided to try taking a photo of the moon again (see my last entry) - to see if I could actually do it without a blur.

This is the best I could manage, and I only had it this clear because I rested the camera partly on a table to keep it steady - it still doesn’t look right, though… a bit to oval. I don’t think I’m ever going to get a good shot unless I get a tripod for my camera.

Here are a couple of photos I took of the moon that were not so successful (lol)! I think they’re actually pretty interesting to look at - perhaps I’ll make a photomanipulation with them…

Okay, I’m going to sign out now. Enjoy your moonwatching!

- Jacky

Yellow Full Moon, taken October 2006. I made several attempts to get a clear picture. But for some reason, no matter how still I held the camera, the moon seemed to blur and distort!

So, I think it’s fair to say I’ve done a fair bit of pondering about the moon. Of course, because of this I think I know quite a lot about the subject - but as we all know (especially us teachers!) is that just because you think you know something, doesn’t mean you really do know something to its fullest extent. For all I am aware, I may have quite a few misconceptions, just as many children in our classes (and other teachers we meet) might have as well.

But here I will list the different observations I have made recently with Susan, and in the past growing up.

What I have noticed:

• The moon is round. We see a circle when we see it. The full circle is always visible somehow (provided there is a clear dark sky). People often only notice the ‘white’ part of the moon - the part where light is reflected onto it. However, if you look closely when it isn’t entirely white, you’ll see the rest of the circle - dark like the night sky, but just a little bit lighter. You can even see an outline.
• You can sometimes see it during the day, though it is more visible at night.
• Over the period of a month, the ‘white’ part we see takes different shapes - sometimes it is a full circle, or semicircle, or crescent (and all the points in between) and sometimes we don’t see any white at all.
• The moon looks like it has a face.
• The moon appears in different parts of the sky - depending on the time of month and time of day. (i.e. it seems to rise and set and when up in the sky it’s position varies there, also)
• Sometimes the moon is yellow or red.
• The full moon makes people a little… crazy…

My personal understandings:

• The moon is the Earth’s one and only (natural) satellite.
• It is spherical (or perhaps ovoid).
• It is pocked with craters, and has hills (mountains?) and valleys - this is what creates the illusion of a face.
• The suns light shines on one side of the moon and reflects onto us.
• It rotates the Earth and the time it makes one rotation, 28 Earth days have passed. We call this period of time a ‘month’ on Earth (the word deriving from the word ‘moon’).
• It spins on its own axis, taking one whole Earth month to make one rotation. This is because the Earth’s gravity field is so strong that the same side of the moon is always facing the Earth.
• Therefore we only ever see the one side of the moon.
• Because the moon is always moving around the Earth it appears to move about in the sky.
• The sun always shines on one whole side of the moon just as it does the Earth (except with lunar eclipses). Because the moon rotates the Earth and we always see the same part of the moon, the whole side of the moon we see could be completely ‘white’ with sunlight (the Full Moon), or partially (Half, Quarter, Crescent etc), or not at all (the New Moon). These we call Phases of the moon.
• As the moon is moving to become Full, it is ‘waxing’, and if it is moving to become the New Moon, it is ‘waning’.
• The Earth spins on its axis as well, and as the Sun shines on about half the Earth at any one time (except in a solar eclipse), this causes everyone on earth to experience day and night (though not simultaneously!). As the Earth spins from day to night to day again, the moon comes into view for us and then out of view again.
• A lunar eclipse is when the Earth gets in between the Sun and Moon and blocks out the sun from the Moon. A solar eclipse is where the moon blocks out the sun from the Earth.
• I THINK the moon has something to do with our tides on Earth (?)
• I THINK the change in colour (yellow and/or red) has something to do with light entering the atmosphere (?). I particularly would like to know more about this aspect of the moon.

Our blogging group consists of me and three other girls. The blog was created by our University to facilitate our development as both science learners and educators, fostering our skills in the processes of learning science concepts. In particular, we are to focus on our knowledge and understanding of the Moon.

There are 5 stages in which we will go through as we learn about the Moon (referred to as the 5 E’s). These are:

1. Engage
2. Explore
3. Explain
4. Elaborate
5. Evaluate

Already we have started, for the past month or so observing and pondering about the Moon and discussing and questioning (i.e. Engaging and Exploring). Very soon, we will share, in this blog space, what we have noticed so far in our observations and the questions we have come across (answered or no).

We hope to get a lot out of this experience, put up some interesting information for any of you watching and we’ll see you on the flipside!

-Jacky