Bernalillo Public Schools

Middle School Distance Learning

Science Grade 6

Week 1 Dates: April 20-24

Activities – Complete the following activities during the week to reach our learning target by Friday. If you choose, take a picture of your work and text or email the picture to your teacher.

Learning Target: I can accurately model the shape and phases of the Moon using round objects found in the home.

The eight phases of the moon. Have you ever noticed that the moon changes over the month? Sometimes you see the full moon and sometimes you see a sliver. Look at the picture below. How does the position of the sun and earth affect what the moon looks like?

Questions to think about:

1. Describe what happens to the Moon as it goes throughout the various phases.

2. Why does this change occur?

3. How long is one cycle of phases?

4. Why does the same side of the Moon always face Earth?

5. What is the source of the Moon’s light?

6. What keeps the Moon in orbit around the Earth?

7. Describe the shape of the Moon’s orbit around the Earth.

Project: Make a model of the phases of the moon through the use of items you have in your

home. Some suggestions are: cookies, round food items, old balls, painting round rocks, painting coins, etc. Make sure to label your phases.

Bonus points – Use another objects to represent the sun and earth. Place the moon phases in

a ways that shows how the light from the sun gets blocked by the earth to cause the reflection on the moon, thereby giving us different views of the moon.

Get credit: Take a picture and send to your teacher or call them during office hours and

explain how you made your model.

Bernalillo Public Schools

Middle School Distance Learning

Science Grade 6

Week 2 Dates: April 27 – May 1

4 Major Types of Galaxies Learning Target: I can describe the different properties of various star groupings.

Activities – Complete the following activities during the week to reach our learning target by Friday. If you choose, take a picture of your work and text or email the picture to your teacher.

Read the following articles about constellations. Then read the article on Myths/Legends. Then complete one or both of the projects. Share your project with teachers and your family.

Constellations

What is a constellation? A constellation is a group of visible stars that form a pattern when viewed from Earth. The pattern they form may take the shape of an animal, a mythological creature, a man, a woman, or an inanimate object such as a microscope, a compass, or a crown. How many constellations are there? The sky was divided up into 88 different constellations in 1922. This included 48 ancient constellations listed by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy as well as 40 new constellations. Star Maps The 88 different constellations divide up the entire night sky as seen from all around the Earth. Star maps are made of the brightest stars and the patterns that they make which give rise to the names of the constellations. The maps of the stars represent the position of the stars as we see them from Earth. The stars in each constellation may not be close to each other at all. Some of them are bright because they are close to Earth while others are bright because they are very large stars. Hemispheres and Seasons Not all of the constellations are visible from any one point on Earth. The star maps are typically

divided into maps for the northern hemisphere and maps for the southern hemisphere. The season of the year can also affect what constellations are visible from where you are located on Earth. Famous Constellations Here are a few of the more famous constellations:

Orion Orion is one of the most visible constellations. Because of its location, it can be seen throughout the world. Orion is named after a hunter from Greek mythology. Its brightest stars are Betelgeuse and Rigel.

Constellation Orion

Ursa Major Ursa Major is visible in the northern hemisphere. It means "Larger Bear" in Latin. The Big Dipper is part of the Ursa Major constellation. The Big Dipper is often used as a way to find the direction north. Ursa Minor Ursa Minor means "Smaller Bear" in Latin. It is located near Ursa Major and also has the pattern of a small ladle called the Little Dipper as part of its larger pattern.

Draco The Draco constellation can be viewed in the northern hemisphere. It means "dragon" in Latin and was one of the 48 ancient constellations. Pegasus The Pegasus constellation is named after the flying horse by the same name from Greek mythology. It can be seen in the northern sky.

Constellation Draco

The Zodiac The zodiac constellations are the constellations that are located within a band that is about 20 degrees wide in the sky. This band is considered special because it is the band where the Sun, the Moon, and the planets all move. There are 13 zodiac constellations. Twelve of these are also used as signs for the zodiac calendar and astrology.

Capricornus Aquarius Pisces Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer Leo Virgo Libra Scorpius Sagittarius Ophiuchus

Uses for Constellations Constellations are useful because they can help people to recognize stars in the sky. By looking for patterns, the stars and locations can be much easier to spot. The constellations had uses in ancient times. They were used to help keep track of the calendar. This was very important so that people knew when to plant and harvest crops.

Another important use for constellations was navigation. By finding Ursa Minor it is fairly easy to spot the North Star (Polaris). Using the height of the North Star in the sky, navigators could figure out their latitude helping ships to travel across the oceans. Interesting Facts about Constellations

The largest constellation by area is Hydra which is 3.16% of the sky. The smallest is Crux which only takes up 0.17 percent of the sky. Small patterns of stars within a constellation are called asterisms. These include the Big

Dipper and Little Dipper. The word "constellation" comes from a Latin term meaning "set with stars." Twenty two different constellation names start with the letter "C."

THE BIG DIPPER

MYTHS/LEGENDS

The Big Dipper is associated with a number of different myths and folk tales in cultures across the world. In Hindu astronomy, the asterism is called Sapta Rishi, or The Seven Great Sages. In eastern Asia, it is known as the Northern Dipper. The Chinese know the seven stars as the

Government, or Tseih Sing. In Malaysia, the asterism is called Buruj Biduk, or The Ladle, and in Mongolia, it is known as the Seven Gods. In an Arabian story, the stars that form the bowl represent a coffin and the three stars marking the handle are mourners following it. The name of the star Alkaid (or Benetnash), located at the tip of the handle, refers to that story.

In the UK and Ireland, the asterism is known as the Plough, and sometimes as the Butcher’s Cleaver in northern parts of England. The old English name for the asterism is Charles’ Wain (wagon), which is derived from the Scandinavian Karlavagnen, Karlsvognen, or Karlsvogna. Charles or Karl was a common name in Germanic languages and the name of the asterism meant “the men’s wagon,” as opposed to the Little Dipper, which was “the women’s wagon.” An even older name for the stars of the Big Dipper was Odin’s Wain, or Odin’s Wagon, referring to Scandinavian mythology.

In Slavic languages and in Romanian, the Big and Little Dipper are known as the Great and Small Wagon, and Germans know the Big Dipper as Großer Wagen, or the Great Cart. The Romans knew the seven stars as the “seven plough oxen,” or Septentrio, with only two of the seven stars representing oxen and the others forming a wagon pulled by the oxen.

Some Native American groups saw the bowl as a bear and the three stars of the handle either as three cubs or three hunters following the bear. The second interpretation is linked to a folk tale explaining why the leaves turn red in autumn: the hunters are chasing a wounded bear and, since the asterism is low in the sky that time of year, the bear’s blood is falling on the leaves, making them turn red.

In more recent history, black slaves in the United States knew the constellation as the Drinking Gourd and used it to find their way north, to freedom. The folk song, “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” gave runaway slaves directions to follow the Big Dipper to get to north. In Africa, the seven stars were sometimes seen as a drinking gourd, which is believed to be the origin of the name the Big Dipper, most commonly used for the figuration in the U.S. and Canada.

============================================================================== PROJECT: Imagine that you’re the captain of the newest space shuttle. Where would you go? What do you think you will see? Is it close to the sun or far? Is it warm or cold? What else is out there? What would you do? Write a story about your adventures, draw a picture that answers the above questions, write a comic strip about your adventures. OR Make a “star map” by drawing random dots on a paper. Make a new constellation by connecting a group of stars together. Name your constellation and the stars involved. Write your own myth/legend about your constellation. To get credit: Take a picture of your story, poster, maps and send to your teacher or call your

teacher during office hours (11:00 – 12:00) and read your story

Bernalillo Public Schools

Middle School Distance Learning

Science Grade 6

Week 3 Dates: May 4 – May 8

The Sun and Stars

Learning Target: : I can identify that the sun as the center of our solar system

Activities – Complete the following activities during the week to reach our learning target by Friday. If you choose, take a picture of your work and text or email the picture to your teacher.

Read the article below then complete the art project at the end. Take a picture of your project and send to your teacher, OR call your teacher to discuss the article.

How We Came To Recognize The Sun As The

Center Of Our Solar System

The Sun-centered model of the solar system was first proposed more than a thousand years before Copernicus.

What does our Solar System really look like? If we were to somehow fly ourselves above the plane where the Sun and the planets are, what would we see in the center of the Solar System? The answer took a while for astronomers to figure out, leading to a debate between what is known as the geocentric (Earth-centered) model and the heliocentric (Sun-centered model).

The ancients understood that there were certain bright points that would appear to move among the background stars. While who exactly discovered the "naked-eye" planets (the planets you can see without a telescope) is lost in antiquity, we do know that cultures all over the world spotted them.

The ancient Greeks, for example, considered the planets to include Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn — as well as the Moon and the Sun. The Earth was in the center of it all (geocentric), with these planets revolving around it. So important did this become in culture that the days of the week were named after the gods, represented by these seven moving points of light.

Earth is at the center of this model of the universe created by Bartolomeu Velho, a Portuguese cartographer, in 1568. Credit: NASA/Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

All the same, not every Greek believed that the Earth was in the middle. Aristarchus of Samos, according to NASA, was the first known person to say that the Sun was in the center of the universe. He proposed this in the third century BCE. The idea never really caught on, and lay dormant (as far as we can tell) for several centuries.

Because European scholars relied on Greek sources for their education, for centuries most people followed the teachings of Aristotle and Ptolemy, according to the Galileo Project at Rice University. But there were some things that didn't make sense. For example, Mars occasionally appeared to move backward with respect to the stars before moving forward again. Ptolemy and others explained this using a system called epicycles, which had the planets moving in little circles within their greater orbits. [Above: The retrograde motion of Mars. Credit: NASA]

But by the fifteen and sixteenth centuries, astronomers in Europe were facing other problems, the project added. Eclipse tables were becoming inaccurate, sailors needed to keep track of their position when sailing out of sight of land (which led to a new method to measure longitude, based partly on accurate timepieces), and the calendar dating from the time of Julius Caesar (44 BCE) no longer was accurate in describing the equinox — a problem for officials concerned with the timing of religious holidays, primarily Easter. (The timing problem was later solved by resetting the calendar and instituting more scientifically rigorous leap years.)

While two 15th-century astronomers (Georg Peurbach and Johannes Regiomontanus) had already consulted the Greek texts for scientific errors, the project continued, it was Nicolaus

Copernicus who took that understanding and applied it to astronomy. His observations would revolutionize our thinking of the world.

Published in 1543, Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies) outlined the heliocentric universe similar to what we know today. Among his ideas, according toEncyclopedia Britannica, was that the planets' orbits should be plotted with respect to the "fixed point" Sun, that the Earth itself is a planet that turns on an axis, and that when the axis changes directions with respect to the stars, this causes the North Pole star to change over time (which is now known as the precession of the equinoxes.)

Putting the Sun at the center of our Solar System, other astronomers began to realize, simplified the orbits for the planets. And it helped explain what was so weird about Mars. The reason it backs up in the sky is the Earth has a smaller orbit than Mars. When Earth passes by Mars in its orbit, the planet appears to go backwards. Then when Earth finishes the pass, Mars appears to move forwards again.

Other supports for heliocentrism began to emerge as well. Johannes Kepler's rules of motions of the planets (based on work from him and Tycho Brahe) are based on the heliocentric model. And in Isaac Newton's Principia, the scientist described how the motions happen: a force called gravity, which appears to be "inversely proportional to the square of the distance between objects", according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Artist's conception of the Kepler Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Newton's gravity theory was later supplanted by that of Albert Einstein, who in the early 20th century proposed that gravity is instead a warping of space-time by massive objects. That said, heliocentric calculations guide spacecraft in their orbits today and the model is the best way to describe how the Sun, planets and other objects move.

Universe Today has articles on both the heliocentric model and thegeocentric model, and Astronomy Cast has an episode on the center of the universe.

This post by Elizabeth Howell originally appeared at Universe Today. It has been republished with permission.

SUN ART PROJECT: Use the process below (or use your own process) to make a model or picture/painting of the sun. Cut out a circle and place it on top of a piece of newspaper/paper. T Squirt small amounts of yellow, orange, and red paint randomly on the circle. Lay a piece of plastic wrap over the paint and rub it to smear the paint. Once dry, glue the sun onto a black cardstock background. Use a cotton swab, add solar flares, sun rays and stars. To get credit: Take a picture of your project and share with your teacher and family. Or call your teacher and explain what you learned about the sun.

Bernalillo Public Schools

Middle School Distance Learning

Science Grade 6

Week 4 Dates: May 11 – May 15

Week 5 Dates: May 18 -22

Big Bang Theory Learning Target: I can cite and explain how microwave background radiation, redshift of galaxies

and the elemental composition of the universe all contributed to the development and verification of the Big Bang Theory explanation of our universe.

Activities – Complete the following activities during the week to reach the learning target by Friday. If you choose, take a picture of your work and text or email the picture to your teacher.

This unit will take 2 weeks to complete. Read the article on the Big Bang Theory. Then complete the Big Bang Theory Tic Tac Toe Activity.

The Universe: Big Bang to Now in 10 Easy

Steps

By Denise Chow October 19, 2011

This artist’s impression shows galaxies at a time less than a billion years after the Big Bang,

when the universe was still partially filled with hydrogen fog that absorbed ultraviolet light.

(Image: © ESO/M. Kornmesser)

Introduction

The broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe is the Big Bang model,

which states that the universe began as an incredibly hot, dense point roughly 13.7 billion years

ago. So, how did the universe go from being fractions of an inch (a few millimeters) across to

what it is today?

Here is a breakdown of the Big Bang to now in 10 easy-to-understand steps.

Step 1: How It All Started

The Big Bang was not an explosion in space, as the theory's name might suggest. Instead, it

was the appearance of space everywhere in the universe, researchers have said. According to the

Big Bang theory, the universe was born as a very hot, very dense, single point in space.

Cosmologists are unsure what happened before this moment, but with sophisticated space

missions, ground-based telescopes and complicated calculations, scientists have been working to

paint a clearer picture of the early universe and its formation.

A key part of this comes from observations of the cosmic microwave background, which

contains the afterglow of light and radiation left over from the Big Bang. This relic of the Big

Bang pervades the universe and is visible to microwave detectors, which allows scientists to

piece together clues of the early universe.

In 2001, NASA launched the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mission to

study the conditions as they existed in the early universe by measuring radiation from the cosmic

microwave background. Among other discoveries, WMAP was able to determine the age of the

universe — about 13.7 billion years old.

Step 2: The Universe's First Growth Spur

NASA, ESA, and S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team

When the universe was very young — something like a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of

a trillionth of a second (whew!) — it underwent an incredible growth spurt. During this burst of

expansion, which is known as inflation, the universe grew exponentially and doubled in size at

least 90 times.

"The universe was expanding, and as it expanded, it got cooler and less dense," David Spergel, a

theoretical astrophysicist at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., told SPACE.com.

After inflation, the universe continued to grow, but at a slower rate. As space expanded, the

universe cooled and matter formed.

Step 3: Too Hot to Shine

NASA/WMAP

Light chemical elements were created within the first three minutes of the universe's formation.

As the universe expanded, temperatures cooled and protons and neutrons collided to make

deuterium, which is an isotope of hydrogen. Much of this deuterium combined to make helium.

For the first 380,000 years after the Big Bang, however, the intense heat from the universe's

creation made it essentially too hot for light to shine. Atoms crashed together with enough force

to break up into a dense, opaque plasma of protons, neutrons and electrons that scattered light

like fog.

Step 4: Let There Be Light

ESA/ LFI & HFI Consortia

About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, matter cooled enough for electrons to combine with

nuclei to form neutral atoms. This phase is known as "recombination," and the absorption of free

electrons caused the universe to become transparent. The light that was unleashed at this time is

detectable today in the form of radiation from the cosmic microwave background.

Yet, the era of recombination was followed by a period of darkness before stars and other bright

objects were formed.

Step 5: Emerging from the Cosmic Dark Ages

Roughly 400 million years after the Big Bang, the universe began to come out of its dark ages.

This period in the universe's evolution is called the age of re-ionization.

This dynamic phase was thought to have lasted more than a half-billion years, but based on new

observations, scientists think re-ionization may have occurred more rapidly than previously

thought.

ESA XMM-Newton/EPIC, LBT/LBC, AIP (J. Kohnert)

During this time, clumps of gas collapsed enough to form the very first stars and galaxies. The

emitted ultraviolet light from these energetic events cleared out and destroyed most of the

surrounding neutral hydrogen gas. The process of re-ionization, plus the clearing of foggy

hydrogen gas, caused the universe to become transparent to ultraviolet light for the first time.

Step 6: More Stars and More Galaxies

ESA, Hubble, NASA

Astronomers comb the universe looking for the most far-flung and oldest galaxies to help them

understand the properties of the early universe. Similarly, by studying the cosmic microwave

background, astronomers can work backwards to piece together the events that came before.

Data from older missions like WMAP and the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), which

launched in 1989, and missions still in operation, like the Hubble Space Telescope, which

launched in 1990, all help scientists try to solve the most enduring mysteries and answer the

most debated questions in cosmology.

Step 7: Birth of Our Solar System

NASA

Our solar system is estimated to have been born a little after 9 billion years after the Big Bang,

making it about 4.6 billion years old. According to current estimates, the sun is one of more than

100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone, and orbits roughly 25,000 light-years from the

galactic core.

Many scientists think the sun and the rest of our solar system was formed from a giant, rotating

cloud of gas and dust known as the solar nebula. As gravity caused the nebula to collapse, it spun

faster and flattened into a disk. During this phase, most of the material was pulled toward the

center to form the sun. [Solar System Infographic: From the Inside Out]

Step 8: The Invisible Stuff in the Universe

In the 1960s and 1970s, astronomers began thinking that there might be more mass in the

universe than what is visible. Vera Rubin, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of

Washington, observed the speeds of stars at various locations in galaxies.

Basic Newtonian physics implies that stars on the outskirts of a galaxy would orbit more slowly

than stars at the center, but Rubin found no difference in the velocities of stars farther out. In

fact, she found that all stars in a galaxy seem to circle the center at more or less the same speed.

X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI;

Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.; Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI;

Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.

This mysterious and invisible mass became known as dark matter. Dark matter is inferred

because of the gravitational pull it exerts on regular matter. One hypothesis states the mysterious

stuff could be formed by exotic particles that don't interact with light or regular matter, which is

why it has been so difficult to detect.

Dark matter is thought to make up 23 percent of the universe. In comparison, only 4 percent of

the universe is composed of regular matter, which encompasses stars, planets and people.

Step 9: The Expanding and Accelerating Universe

In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble made a revolutionary discovery about the universe.

Using a newly constructed telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles, Hubble

observed that the universe is not static, but rather is expanding.

Decades later, in 1998, the prolific space telescope named after the famous astronomer, the

Hubble Space Telescope, studied very distant supernovas and found that, a long time ago, the

universe was expanding more slowly than it is today. This discovery was surprising because it

was long thought that the gravity of matter in the universe would slow its expansion, or even

cause it to contract.

NASA, ESA, D. Coe (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, and Space Telescope Science

Institute), N. Benitez (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain), T. Broadhurst (University of the Basque Country, Spain),

and H. Ford

Dark energy is thought to be the strange force that is pulling the cosmos apart at ever-increasing

speeds, but it remains undetected and shrouded in mystery. The existence of this elusive energy,

which is thought to make up 73 percent of the universe, is one of the most hotly debated topics in

cosmology.

Step 10: We Still Need to Know More

NASA

While much has been discovered about the creation and evolution of the universe, there are

enduring questions that remain unanswered. Dark matter and dark energy remain two of the

biggest mysteries, but cosmologists continue to probe the universe in hopes of better

understanding how it all began.

PROJECT: Complete the Big Bang Theory Tic-Tac-Toe by completing 3 in a row of activities

of your choice. The three activities you choose should be connected as if you were to win a tick

tac toe game. Either choose three across, three down, or 3 in a diagonal line.

To get credit: Take a picture of the projects you complete and send to your teacher or call your

teacher during office hours to share your learning. This project is worth 3 assignments for extra

credit.

BIG BANG THEORY TIC-TAC-TOE

Category Category Category

Kinesthetic

Create a model that demonstrates the origins of the universe.

Musical

Write a song/rap about the 3 pieces of evidence for the big bang theory. Song must have at least 3 versus and 1 chorus.

Mathematical

discuss the mathematical evidence that supports the Big Bang Theory.

Movie makers

Write a skit about the creation of our universe (think: timeline formation of galaxies, stars, planets).

Verbal

Make a podcast (mp3) “radio hour” in which you interview the scientists who came up with the big bang theory. Q & A about how they used the 3 pieces of evidence to create the big bang theory.

Visual

Create a foldable to explain the 3 pieces of evidence for the Big Bang Theory.

Artistic

Create an informational poster that represents the origins of the universe. Posters must include color and be neatly completed.

Writing

Write a letter to the scientists who came up with the big bang theory. Ask them questions about how they created the big bang theory. Then have another group member to write back as the actual scientists!

History

Create a timeline about the big bang theory (include dates, scientist names, and technologies created, and discoveries made)