This material is a comprehensive educational resource for informal educators highlighting the major mission information and science background for the Interstellar Boundary Explorer mission, a Small Explorer Earth-orbiting spacecraft that is... (View More) designed to map the distant boundary between the solar wind from our Sun and the interstellar medium. New for 2012, this material also includes a comprehensive overview of all of the science results released through mid-2011 and information about the IBEX satellite's orbital change in June 2011. All of this material can be modified to use with informal education audiences, including museum and planetarium visitors, after–school clubs, and others. It is available as PDF .zip file and as a PowerPoint .zip file. The PowerPoint .zip file contains the newly–revised PowerPoint resource and its associated movie clips. The PDF .zip file contains a PDF version of the newly-revised PowerPoint resource, a PDF version of the Notes section for each of the slides, and the movie clips. Because movie clips cannot be embedded into the PDF slides, each movie clip file name contains its associated slide number so users can play the movie clip alongside the slide. (View Less)

The 9-session NASA Family Science Night program invites middle school children and their families to discover the wide variety of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics being performed at NASA and in everyday life. Family Science Night... (View More) programs explore various themes on the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and the Universe through fun, hands-on activities, including at-home experiments. Information about Family Science Night implementation and support resources, including the facilitator's guide, are available by registering on the Family Science Night Facilitators website (see Related & Supplemental Resources for link). (View Less)

Dancing Lights: Exploring the Aurora through Art and Writing is a science-in-literacy program about the aurora. Students in grades 3-5 write and illustrate their perceptions, ideas, and facts pertaining to auroral science. This short educator... (View More) background primer was based upon interactions with teachers during Dancing Lights workshops and is meant as a quick guide to the science of the aurora. (View Less)

During the last sunspot cycle between 1996-2008, over 21,000 flares and 13,000 clouds of plasma exploded from the Sun's magnetically active surface. These events create space weather. Students will learn more about space weather and how it affects... (View More) Earth through reading a NASA press release and viewing a NASA eClips video segment. Then students will explore the statistics of various types of space weather storms by determining the mean, median and mode of a sample of storm events. This activity is part of the Space Math multimedia modules that integrate NASA press releases, NASA archival video, and mathematics problems targeted at specific math standards commonly encountered in middle school textbooks. The modules cover specific math topics at multiple levels of difficulty with real-world data and use the 5E instructional sequence. (View Less)

During the last sunspot cycle between 1996-2008, over 21,000 flares and 13,000 clouds of plasma exploded from the Sun's magnetically active surface. Students will learn more about space weather through reading a NASA press release and viewing a NASA... (View More) eClips video segment. Then students will explore the statistics of various types of space weather storms by determining the mean, median and mode of different samples of storm events. This activity is part of the Space Math multimedia modules that integrate NASA press releases, NASA archival video, and mathematics problems targeted at specific math standards commonly encountered in middle school textbooks. The modules cover specific math topics at multiple levels of difficulty with real-world data and use the 5E instructional sequence. (View Less)

Students will learn about the Transit of Venus through reading a NASA press release and viewing a NASA eClips video that describes several ways to observe transits. Then students will study angular measurement by learning about parallax and how... (View More) astronomers use this geometric effect to determine the distance to Venus during a Transit of Venus. This activity is part of the Space Math multimedia modules that integrate NASA press releases, NASA archival video, and mathematics problems targeted at specific math standards commonly encountered in middle school textbooks. The modules cover specific math topics at multiple levels of difficulty with real-world data and use the 5E instructional sequence. (View Less)

Students will learn about the twin STEREO spacecraft and how they are being used to track solar storms through reading a NASA press release and viewing a NASA eClips video segment. Then students will examine data to learn more about the frequency... (View More) and speed of solar storms traveling from the Sun to Earth. This activity is part of the Space Math multimedia modules that integrate NASA press releases, NASA archival video, and mathematics problems targeted at specific math standards commonly encountered in middle school textbooks. The modules cover specific math topics at multiple levels of difficulty with real-world data and use the 5E instructional sequence. (View Less)

This is a challenge-based activity set designed to have students explore and research the Magnetospheric MultiScale Mission (MMS). Students will explore the purpose and relevance of the mission as well as the scientific methodologies. Activities... (View More) include application of the scientific method, problem solving strategies, research, collaboration, critical thinking and communication. Links to resources and appropriate web 2.0 tools are provided through a shared livebinder. (View Less)

This is an activity about sunlight as an energy source. Learners will create a plant box and observe that a plant will grow toward the Sun, its primary source of energy. This hands-on activity is an additional lesson as part of the book, The Day... (View More) Joshua Jumped Too Much. (View Less)

This is an online set of information about astronomical alignments of ancient structures and buildings. Learners will read background information about the alignments to the Sun in such structures as the Great Pyramid, Chichen Itza, and others.... (View More) Next, the site contains 10 short problem sets that involve a variety of math skills, including determining the scale of a photo, measuring and drawing angles, plotting data on a graph, and creating an equation to match a set of data. Each set of problems is contained on one page and all of the sets utilize real-world problems relating to astronomical alignments of ancient structures. Each problem set is flexible and can be used on its own, together with other sets, or together with related lessons and materials selected by the educator. This was originally included as a folder insert for the 2010 Sun-Earth Day. (View Less)