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Moon Diagrams
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Instructions
The instructor, Michele, asked the students to draw a diagram of the sun-earth-moon system if the students were sitting above it all and looking down. The students worked in pairs to develop an areal space perspective of the system. Afterward, they were asked to go around and draw in each of the moon's phases accordingly around the earth.
Student questions and conversations
Is the earth closer to the sun or to the moon?
The moon is always rising, but so does the sun…
We have to consider the angles too…
We used the pinhole cameras to determine how far away the sun was from the earth, and it was really far away.
This should be a lot bigger, I think…
The moon travels counterclockwise.
I'm a little confused…
If this is full, then this side of the moon should be shaded and this side will be lit.
Waxing crescent, quarter moon…
How would it be lit on that side?
Moon Diagram Presentations
 | Questions to guide student thinking Everyone seems to think that the sun is farther away from the moon. What would happen if they were all on the same plane? There are things we can infer from their paths crossing… Can we have complete eclipses? Can the entire moon or the entire sun be blocked out? If we could, we might be able to determine the relative size of the sun or the moon… |
Instructor Feedback
Currently, when the moon is out, it appears to be a waning gibbous that is almost a third-quarter moon. As a class, we discussed what we should be seeing in the next couple of days. Michele asked the students to draw a picture of what is going on with the phases of the moon if someone were to be above the earth/moon/sun picture. She asked them to take into account relative distances and sizes when they drew their pictures in pairs. All of the groups drew the moon being close to the earth and the sun being far away, but not all of the groups drew the moon half-lit at each phase. When we asked the class why they drew the moon closer to the earth, they said that they knew it had to be closer to the earth than the sun because sometimes there are eclipses where the moon covers most of the sun, so the moon must be closer to us than the sun. The idea of the moon being half-lit at all times was difficult for some groups to understand because they are used to seeing the moon from their own perspective, on earth.
