Suggested Resources

In this activity, students investigate different scenarios, which show that a gas occupies space and learn about what happens when objects hit the atmosphere. The activity can be followed by lessons about the atmosphere and its different layers or activities about greenhouse gases.

The Earth rotates on its axis, giving us night and day – but what about other celestial objects like the Sun? In this activity students will use real satellite images of the Sun (Solar Dynamics Observatory, SDO) to discover that the Sun also rotates about its own axis! For this they will use a technique used for the first time by Galileo Galilei himself, and still used by astronomers to this day: following the displacement of sunspots. Observing Galileo’s drawings, students will make hypotheses about the nature and motion of sunspots. To test their hypotheses and provide evidence for the rotation of the Sun, they will use a set of 27 consecutive daily SDO images from the 25th November to the 20th December 2014, containing a large number of sunspots. Students will make crude estimates of the rotation period of the Sun (without calculations) by following different sunspots. They will finally discuss and compare their findings.

Students play a game of printable cards to become familiar with the planets of the Solar System. By playing, they learn that all planets go around the Sun and some properties about these planets. They also learn the name of the planets and their order in the Solar System.

This hands-on activity involves the creation of a model to show the impact of light pollution on the night sky and raise awareness about this subject. By building this model students are encouraged to take responsibility for reducing light pollution: they can learn how to use outdoor lighting responsibly by only using it where it’s needed and in the required amount.

Let’s learn how to break particles to study their composition with a simple device (“the accelerator”). Students will study the effect of collisions between marbles, introducing various forms of energy, such as potential, kinetic and binding energy and investigating the possibility of transforming energy from one form to another.

To understand the very diverse scales in Nature —from the smallest meaningful length (Plank’s length) to the size of the observable Universe, let’s familiarize ourselves with orders of magnitude or powers of 10! In this activity, students play a game of cards to achieve this goal and marvel at the range of lengths of objects in our universe!

By building a homemade spectrometer with simple materials like a CD and a matchbox, you can discover the visible light spectrum observing it quickly and easily and discovering the colors that compose it.

With this hands-on activity, students build a model of the Milky Way, learning what our Galaxy looks like, where we stand in it, about the objects it hosts and the distances between them. They will also learn about galaxies and how the Universe formed and how it evolves.

In this activity students will mimick the orbit of the Moon around the Earth, demonstrating how the Moon always keeps the same face towards Earth. They will also learn about the difference between the duration of Earth and Moon day.

Students build a star lantern and by implementing this activity, they learn that people have created constellations. They learn that a constellation is composed of different stars and can recognise some of them.

The Sun is the nearest star and generates great interest in children and young people. Knowing its structure is important to understand how it works, its influence on our planet and to understand more about other stars in the Universe. In this activity, by building a model of the Sun with plasticine of different colors, children will learn about its structure in a playful and educational way.