Week 5 blog, week 6 class: EARTH, SUN, AND MOON

-What did you do in lab today?

1. In lab today we did a lot of introductions, which was really fun! We got to know one another even more which was really cool. What we did was got a slip of paper and created a scientist, rated how we felt about science, something about our scientist, and then a fun fact about ourselves. After introductions we talked more about what we are going to be doing in class and lecture moving forward. After that we started talking about our big questions for the day, these questions are posted and answered below. 

-What was the big question? (all big questions are posted below)/ What did you learn in Thursday's discussion? 

1. How the phases of the moon occur?

- phases of the moon occur because of the moon and its orbit around the sun and earth. Different placements cause different moon phases. 

2. what causes the seasons?

- The earth's spin axis is tilted with respect to its orbital plane. This is what causes the seasons. When the earth's axis points towards the sun, it is summer for that hemisphere. When the earth's axis points away, winter can be expected

3. What causes the lunar eclipse? 

- When the sun casts earth's shadow on the moon when it is in orbit. 

👽In lab:

- 1 rotation of Earth on its axis= 1 day 

- 1 rotation of Earth around the Sun= 1 year 

- Solar system, the area around the sun that is impacted by OUR sun. This is planets and stars and everything else. Sun is in the middle of the solar system, NOT the Earth. (that's what the Catholics thought) EARTH GOES AROUND THE SUN. 

- Geocentric = earth centered VS. Heliocentric = sun centered 

-Copernicus and Galileo

    -found that the earth goes around the sun, not the sun goes around the earth. Copernicus wrote a book about it, Galileo found the book, challenged it, was put in prison for it but made other great scientific discoveries. 

- Plane of the Ecliptic 

-Equator and the tropic lines 

    - earths tilt is why we have seasons, June 20th is summer solstice 

    - Tropic of Cancer and tropic of Capricorn. Tropic of Cancer is north, Tropic of Capricorn 

- Equinox and Solstice

    -Summer solstice= June 20th, longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere 

        - on summer solstice if you are standing on the equator at 12 noon, you will have no shadow. If you are standing in Iowa at 12 noon on summer solstice, your shadow will be going NORTH because the earths tilt (in the north hemisphere) is pointing north, the sun is shining on the south which causes your shadow to go north. 

    -Equinox= when the sun i son the equator, equal, equal sunlight, 12 hours of sunlight and 12 ours of night FOR EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD. 

- Winter solstice= December 21/22, shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere 

    -North pole always points to the North Star. North Star is important for location, had helped us discover locations like continents. 

- Why is Pluto a planet? 

- Phases of the moon 

TEXTBOOK 

What did you learn? 

- One big thing that I learned from the textbook was from the key takeaway section where the explanation of heliocentric and geocentric are broken down and explained more in depth. 

What was helpful? 

- the section with the different phases of the moon was really helpful. I only knew the basic names of the phases of the moon but now I know the real names. I feel like this can be helpful because it could make learning about the moon phases easier and other information about the moon. 

What do you need more information on? 

- right now i feel pretty confident with what I have learned and what I know

What question, comments, or concerns do you have? 

-none