Making Shadows

This activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, looks at how shadows are formed and what affects their size, direction and shape. Students place an object at the centre of a sheet of paper, and use a torch to produce shadows of different length and direction.

This activity can be used as an introduction...

The Spinning Earth

In this activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, students are introduced to the rotating Earth and the concept of longitude. They will carry out simple arithmetic that relates the 24 hour clock with the Earth’s rotation. The questions in the activity require an understanding of angle: one hour being equal to...

Space rocks

This short video and accompanying worksheet explains where asteroids and meteoroids come from, what they are made from and how they may sometimes fall to Earth. It also looks at how comets are formed and the role they may have played in bringing water to Earth.

This...

Radius and Volume of Exoplanets

This activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, uses data from NASA’s Kepler space probe to determine the size of an exoplanet, and provides students with an insight into the advantages and disadvantages of the transit method of exoplanet detection.

Plotting the Rotation Curve of M31

In this activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, students use real data, taken from a scientific paper, to plot the rotational curve of M31 (Andromeda), our neighbouring spiral galaxy. They will look at Kepler’s third law to predict the motion of stars around the centre of M31. They will then measure the...

Kepler's Third Law

This activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, illustrates Kepler’s Third Law for our own Solar System using graphical methods, with a further look at how the same law can be used to derive information about the orbits of exoplanets around their parent stars....

The Age of the Universe

This activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, looks at Hubble’s law, whereby students use real data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to plot a graph from which they can obtain the Hubble constant. Students then look at the possible sources of error in their data and use this to calculate the uncertainty in...

The Rotational Period of the Sun

This activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, introduces students to ways of combining errors (uncertainties) from two independent measured quantities. Using the equation for Doppler shift, the error in the rotational velocity and time period are calculated....

Raising Standards in STEM and Other Subjects: Using Space-related Contexts and Applications

The Leading Space Education programme has been funded by the STFC since September 2008. A network of schools was established and supported by SSAT, to develop and embed high-quality, space-themed educational practice. All schools started from different prior experiences of engagement with space education and are...