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Royal Observatory Greenwich
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Exploring moons
This activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, is designed to help students find out all about the Moon, and some of the other 200+ moons that orbit other planets in the solar system.
It includes a short introductory video and two separate series of activities suitable for either upper key stage 2 or key stage 3 pupils. Individual activities could be picked out and used, or a series of lessons could be planned around them - or perhaps they could be used as an extra-curricular activity with a science club or during science week. There are strong cross-curricular links to maths, and other potential links with English and art.
Upper key stage 2 activities:
- Decode the message - students solve maths problems to crack the moon code.
- Base camp on the Moon - students write about what they would need on the moon, and draw what life may be like.
- Moon maths - fractions using the number of moons around the different planets.
- Compare the moons - using scaled drawings from moon images to work out dimensions.
- Orbital periods - converting units to compare the times of some moon orbits.
Key stage 3 activities:
- On the Moon - using scaled images they determine sizes of features from the Apollo 11 landing.
- Base camp on the Moon - writing about the challenges of living on the Moon.
- An astronaut's weight on different moons - a comparison as the gravitational field strength changes.
- Size of the moons - scaled diagrams to determine the size of different moons.
- Massive moving moons - compares masses and orbital periods of some moons.
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