Activities for Students
You
cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it
for himself.
-Galileo Galilei
Tour
through these topics to find exciting activities, images, interactive
tools, text, and other resources to let you research our special
star -- the Sun.
Check out our new comics series!
Design Your Own Solar Cupcakes!
Build an SDO Hexaflexagon!
Activity Categories:
Featured
Activities:
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Comparison
Activities
- Updated
How big, how hot, and how far is the Sun? These activities
are designed to introduce you to the solar scale by comparing
the diameter, the temperature, and the distance to the Sun
to familiar things on Earth. |
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Colors and Motions
of the Sun Video
- New!
Streaming video "Colors and Motions of the Sun", created
by Professor J. Pasachoff and Williams College, Massachusetts. |
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Colors
of the Sun Video
Watch the streaming video of The Colors of the Sun, produced
by the Stanford Solar Center and Lockheed Martin Solar and
Astrophysics Lab. |
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Quizzes:
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Sunspot
Quiz
These
sets of questions test your knowlege of sunspots. Why are
sunspots dark? How long is the sunspot cycle, on average?
See if you can answer these questions and more with our
sunpot
quiz!
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Solar
Granulation Quiz
On
this page we give bite-sized portions of some of the most
fascinating aspects about the Sun, in the form of questions,
that you can ask yourself to test your knowledge. Along the
way, we point to sources for more information so that you
can explore the topics on your own. |
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Comparison
Activities
- Updated
How big, how hot, and how far is the Sun? These activities
are designed to introduce you to the solar scale by comparing
the diameter, the temperature, and the distance to the Sun
to familiar things on Earth. |
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Galileo
Challenge
Galileo was one of the first and most important observers
of the Sun. Why do you think these observations were important
to Galileo and to the people of his time? Test your knowledge
with our Galileo Quiz!
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Sunspots:
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Are
Sunspots Really on the Sun?
When
Galileo Galilei discovered sunspots, he had a problem. In
1612, he had pointed his new version of the Dutch tool called
a "telescope" towards the heavens and found what
appeared to be dark smudges on the Sun. How could this be?
Find out how Galileo proved that they were spots on the
Sun and not undiscovered planets circling the Sun.
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Sunspot
Races
Place your bets! Can you correctly predict when spots will
disappear or reappear on the Sun? |
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Sunspot
Quiz
These
sets of questions test your knowlege of sunspots. Why are
sunspots dark? How long is the sunspot cycle, on average?
See if you can answer these questions and more with our
sunpot
quiz!
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The
Spinning Sun
Does
the Sun spin? If so, how fast? Find out by collecting solar
images and then compare your sunspot sketches with those
made by Galileo.
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Solar
Music:
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The
Singing Sun
Have you ever wondered what
the Sun would sound like if you could hear it? Our
Sun lies 93,000,000 miles away, surrounded by the vacuum of
space. Sound won't travel through space, of course. But with
the right instrument, scientists can "hear" pulsations
from the Sun. |
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Understanding
Solar Music
The sun is filled with sound, and we can
learn about its insides by studying this sound. In fact, this
is the ONLY way we can learn about its inside because the
light we see from the sun comes only from its outside. |
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Viewing
the Sun:
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Solar
Images and Data
To discover various characteristics
of the Sun, you'll need to observe it. Your "eyes"
will be the SOHO spacecraft, currently circling the Sun about
1,000,000 miles from Earth. With SOHO's 12 specialized scientific
instruments, we can explore everything from the Sun's glorious
halo or "corona", to the violent magnetic storms
on its surface, to the sound waves which help us understand
the mysteries of the Sun's deep interior. |
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Observing
the Sun
There are several ways you can observe
the Sun, and hopefully sunspots, for yourself. The easiest
and safest is to project the Sun by building your own pinhole
camera. Or, if you have your own telescope, you will need
to obtain a solar filter. There are even solar telescopes
online, which you can access via the web to observe the Sun.
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The
Electromagnetic Spectrum:
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What
is Ultraviolet Light?
This activity explores ultraviolet
light -- what it is, where it comes from, how we can detect
it, and what effects it has upon us and our Earth. |
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Build
a Spectroscope
The visible spectrum is only a part of
what our sun, a star, emits
within the electromagnetic spectrum. In this activity, you
can build a working spectroscope to study the nature of light. |
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Cereal Box Spectroscope
How to make a very basic spectroscope using a diffraction grating and cereal box.
STEREO Learning Center
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Sundials:
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Make
Your Own Sundial
Exploratorium activity where
you can determine your latitute, find out how sundials work,
and construct a working sundial. |
Other
Sundial Links
This page gives a comprehensive list
of links to sundial related pages in the WWW.
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Other
Activities and Exercises:
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Magnetism
& The Sun
This activity covers the basic principles of
magnetism. Learn how they apply to phenomena on the Sun,
such as sunspots, flares, prominences, and coronal mass
ejections.
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Effects
of the Sun on our Planet
In this activity, you can experiment with plants, light,
heat, and water evaporation. Design a simple solar cooker,
a "solar-powered" method to perform a routine task,
or build a parabolic solar collector. |
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Our Star the Sun
Aimed at elementary school students, the Project FIRST: Eye on the Sky website has a set of detailed lesson plans.
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Interview
with Mr. Sol
Have you ever wondered what our star thinks about his (or
her?) role up there in the sky? Have you considered what an
awesome responsibility it must be, generating all that heat
and light from fusion and having so many living beings depending
upon you? Sol
really does light up our life. Imagine what he might say if
you could interview him. |
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Solar Learning
Activities
Sun-related, hands-on activities for teaching basic physical concepts of the Sun.
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Quest for the Color of the Sun
This activity is a guessing-game approach on how an amateur astronomer might go about discovering the
true color of the Sun - as it would appear to us if we went up into space. |
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