THE DYNAMIC SUN
Middle School Activities
The activities on the following pages were developed to build on and reinforce
some of the learning we hope took place during the Dynamic Sun presentation. Some
would certainly take more time than others to complete. These were developed by Betty
Harris, a middle school teacher with many years of experience in Cape May County, N.J.,
as part of a teacher/intern program she participated in with the SOHO project. Her e-mail
address is [email protected] if you want to contact her with questions or comments.
The final page gives the relevant National Science Standards, Grades 5-8, and the
Benchmarks for Science Literacy, Grades 5-8, that we believe are addressed by the presentation.
Remember that TeacherMid.pdf, the teacher’s handout for the presentation also on
the CD, contains a number of links to resources and information on other Web sites.
THE DYNAMIC SUN
Name ________________________________________________
DATE _________________________
Preview and Postview
DIRECTIONS: Answer True or False in the PREVIEW column prior to viewing The Dynamic Sun .
Following the viewing, do the same in the POSTVIEW column
Preview
Postview
_____
_____
1.
The Sun produces enough energy in one second to power the U.S. for
90,000 years.
_____
_____
2.
It takes 8 minutes for light from the Sun to reach the earth.
_____
_____
3.
The solar wind causes the tails of comets to face toward the Sun.
_____
_____
4.
If you drove a car at 100 miles per hour toward the Sun, it would take 50
years to get there.
_____
_____
5.
The ancient Mayan, Egyptian, and other cultures worshipped the Sun.
_____
_____
6.
The Sun is the only star in our galaxy.
_____
_____
7.
The Sun is mostly composed of hydrogen, some helium and a trace of
other elements.
_____
_____
8.
The Sun’s period of rotation is about 27 days.
_____
_____
9.
The Sun’s corona is only visible during a lunar eclipse.
_____
_____
10.
The solar wind pushes and shapes the earth’s magnetosphere.
THE DYNAMIC SUN
“PAGING THE SUN”
Design a Sun Home Page for the World Wide Web.
Consider the following in your design:
• Intended Audience – Middle School Students
• Pictures, diagrams, and images you’ll use (you must use images
from some of the SOHO instruments) – give the URLs for them. (The
SOHO home page is at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/)
• Links to other sites – name the sites and give the URLs for them
• Fonts, font sizes and font colors
• It may be very general or very specific, but five topics or facts about
the Sun must be included
Create an 18 in. x 24 in. poster which looks like the home page.
URLs for links, images, etc. may be written on the back of the
poster.
THE DYNAMIC SUN
LAYER LEARNING
Four students in Mrs. Clark’s science class are learning about the different layers of the sun.
“Fuse” your way into the clues and find out which student studied each layer. Place an “X” in
the boxes corresponding to the layers each student did not study. Each layer was studied by a
different student.
1. Rich and the girl studying the visible part of the Sun’s atmosphere live next door to each
other.
2. Marie decided not to learn about the invisible layer surrounding the chromosphere.
3. Frank did not study the area where fusion takes place.
4. Kyla studied the part visible during a solar eclipse.
RICH
MARIE
PHOTOSPHERE
CORE
CHROMOSPHERE
CORONA
Rich studied the _______________________.
Marie studied the ______________________.
Frank studied the ______________________.
Kyla studied the _______________________.
FRANK
KYLA
?
THE DYNAMIC SUN
LAYER LEARNING – ANSWER KEY
Rich studied the core.
Marie studied the photosphere.
Frank studied the chromosphere.
Kyla studied the corona.
THE DYNAMIC SUN
LET’S ADVERTISE SOHO!!!
Design
a T-Shirt or Bumper Sticker
about SOHO
INCLUDE SOMETHING ABOUT
•
•
•
SOHO’s orbit,
the images it produces
and/or a picture of SOHO
ADD
an appropriate SOHO slogan
to put on the t-shirt or bumper sticker
THE DYNAMIC SUN
IT SOUNDS “SUNSATIONAL”
You heard the sounds of the Sun.
Now it’s your turn to create some sounds.
Use your best “Al Yankovich creativity”
to write a SONG or RAP about the Sun.
REQUIREMENTS:
• Eight or more non-repeating lines. (It may contain a repeating chorus that is not part of the required minimum eight lines.)
• Make up your own tune or choose a familiar tune to go with your
lyrics.
(Note: An alternative task could be to create a poem on the Sun.)
THE DYNAMIC SUN
National Science Standards, Grades 5 – 8
A. Scientific Inquiry
• Think critically and logically to make the relationship between evidence and explanations.
• Technology used to gather data enhances accuracy.
B. Physical Science
• An object that is not being subjected to a force will continue to move at a constant speed in
a straight line.
• In most nuclear reactions, energy is transferred in or out of a system. Heat, light, mechanical motion, or electricity might all be involved in such transfers.
• The Sun is the major source of energy for changes on the earth’s surface. Its energy
arrives as light with a wide range of wavelengths consisting of visible light, infrared, and
ultraviolet radiation.
D. Earth and Space Science
• The Sun, an average star, is the central and largest body in the solar system.
• Gravity is the force that keeps planets in orbit around the Sun and governs the rest of the
motion in the solar system.
• The Sun is the major source of energy for phenomena on the earth’s surface.
E. Science and Technology
• Science helps drive technology while technology provides tools for investigations, inquiry,
and analysis.
Benchmarks for Science Literacy, Grades 5 – 8
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Technology is essential to science for such purposes as access to outer space and other
remote locations.
The Sun is many thousands of times closer to the Earth than any other star.
The Sun is a medium-sized star located near the edge of a disk-shaped galaxy of stars.
Light from the Sun is made up of a mixture of many different colors of light.
The Sun’s gravitational pull holds the planets in their orbits just as the Earth’s gravitational
pull holds the moon and satellites in orbit.
Energy in the form of heat is almost always a product of an energy transformation.
Chunks of rocks mixed with ice have orbits which carry them close to the Sun, where the
Sun’s radiation boils off frozen material from their surface and pushes it into a long,
illuminated tail.
Since the forces that hold the nucleus of an atom together are much stronger than
electromagnetic forces, great amounts of energy are released from the nuclear reactions in
the Sun.