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Session 7. Our Nearest Neighbor: The Moon
Moon landing.
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Learning Goals
During this session, you will have an opportunity to build understandings
to help you:
- Describe, cite evidence for, and evaluate current theories
of the Moon's origin
- Explain how the Moon's history informs our understanding
of Earth’s history
- Comprehend the scale of the Earth-Moon system
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Video Overview
Earth's Moon has been a source of curiosity throughout human history.
It is Earth's closest companion in the Solar System, yet it appears to
be very different from the Earth. There is a growing body of evidence,
however, that tells us that there are also important similarities between
the Earth and its Moon. In this session we “travel” to our
nearest neighbor to collect clues that we can use to interpret the features
of the Moon and story of the Moon's origin.
Video Outline
The Moon’s motions in the night sky
are so familiar to us that we may take the Moon for granted. But what
can we learn from
studying the Moon? What means can we use to investigate it? Both
Soviet and American
astronauts collected rocks from the Moon’s surface and returned
them to Earth for study. What stories can these rocks can tell
us about the Moon's mysterious past and what can they reveal about the
history
of our home planet, Earth?
In the video our journey to the Moon
begins with a first person perspective from Dr. Harrison Schmitt,
an Apollo astronaut and geolgist,
and the only scientist to have ever set foot on another world.
Then Dr. R. Hank Donnelly, Dr. John Wood, and Dr. Myron Lecar
assist us in considering
the current theories and supporting evidence for the Moon's
origin. We end our journey by considering what the Moon can tell
us about events
early in Earth's history.
Throughout the video, we observe
elementary school children being interviewed as they explore
their ideas about the Moon and its
origin.
We also visit Kathy Price and her fifth graders at Naaba
Ani Elementary School in Bloomfield, New Mexico as they think about
the sizes of the
Earth and the Moon, and the distance between them. Finally,
we observe as the students apply knowledge of the angular
size of the Earth and Moon
in constructing a scale model of the Earth-Moon system. View the video ==>
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