February 5, 2024 • 25 mins
My greatest desire for this podcast is to show you, the teacher, how teaching can be. In its purest sense and in the light of First People's Principles of Learning, there is generally one in the room who is about to lead a discussion on a particular topic. But it is not shared without great respect for the ones listening, offering up the opportunity to differ, interpret, analyze and question.
And when it comes to space, inevitably there will be questions asked that you don't know the answer to. But every time this happens, allow it to add to your knowledge bank so that if it comes up again in the future, you're ready.
So this may be a discussion about the Moon, but it is more than that. It is as teaching should be: multiple people involved in a respectable conversation, delving deeper and deeper into a topic. I hope you notice and can think of ways that this conversation could lead into activities of inquiry, presentation by the students, group-lead gallery walks involving art and science and history, filled with opportunities to express a newfound and, indeed, profound understanding of this heavenly body we call the Moon.
Where could your lesson go next? What planet or star or galaxy do you want to learn about to lead further lessons and explorations of space? If you allow the teacher mind to go wild, the possibilities are endless.
And when it comes to space, inevitably there will be questions asked that you don't know the answer to. But every time this happens, allow it to add to your knowledge bank so that if it comes up again in the future, you're ready.
So this may be a discussion about the Moon, but it is more than that. It is as teaching should be: multiple people involved in a respectable conversation, delving deeper and deeper into a topic. I hope you notice and can think of ways that this conversation could lead into activities of inquiry, presentation by the students, group-lead gallery walks involving art and science and history, filled with opportunities to express a newfound and, indeed, profound understanding of this heavenly body we call the Moon.
Where could your lesson go next? What planet or star or galaxy do you want to learn about to lead further lessons and explorations of space? If you allow the teacher mind to go wild, the possibilities are endless.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is such a teachable moment becausewhen you're in a classroom and students ask
a question like that, you pauseand you think, oh, wait,
that was actually a really good question. If I was in a classroom,
I would definitely say let's just lookthat up. And you know what would
happened is next time somebody asked methat question, I'd have the answer that's
right, And in fact, nexttime the topic comes up, the question
(00:23):
may not come up, but I'llstill have the answer, and I just
may bring it up right and makethis a point of interest and a point
of discussion. Welcome back to anotherepisode of Science three sixty. This is
Cheryl Stevenson and today I'm taking overfor Tim as the host. Yes it's
(00:48):
true and our conversation orbits around themoon, but the bigger lesson is as
a teacher, learning it well enoughto be able to talk about it,
but at the same time knowing tosay I don't know when you just don't
know. Cople listen. This podcastis a proud member of the Teach Better
(01:11):
Podcast Network, Better Today, BetterTomorrow, and the podcast to Get You
There. Explore more podcasts at wwwdot Teach Better Podcastnetwork dot com. Now
let's get onto the episode. So, Tim, I thought that I would
ask you a few more specific questions, kind of carrying on from last time.
(01:33):
But I know you teach astronomy.So when you teach about space and
people don't know anything about it,what do you usually like to start with?
What do you Because there's so muchyou could choose, where do you
start hm it? I'd have tosay I start with the the things that
(01:57):
most people don't If you asked anybodyto you know, what's the most what's
your most interesting thing or most whatdo you wonder the most about space?
Most people say, oh, blackholes, wormholes, all kinds of very
obscure things that have limited you know, like there's not a specific answer.
(02:20):
So as opposed to that, Iwould generally start with things like the Moon
for example. Okay, you know, like our nearest neighbor. So for
example, what would you want toknow about the moon? What would I
want to know about the Moon?Why? Truthfully, I don't know a
lot about the Moon except for humanswent there. Yeah, I don't know
(02:46):
even how many times we went there. Did we only land there the one
time? Nope? Nope? Infact, there were six landings on the
landing, six human landings on theMoon, and we're coming up to more
with the Artemis mission, and thenext year or two we're going to start
to see that happening more and more. But you know, the Moon is
(03:12):
some will say now an essential partof any planet that has life. The
Moon stabilizes our rotation, keeps aplanet from wobbling. Planet wobbles Earth.
Yeah, planet Earth wobbles. There'sa twenty six thousand year wobble. It's
called precession. And the way wenotice now is that the axis of the
(03:37):
Earth points straight at the north starPolaris, or at least very close,
something like instead of ninety degrees straightnorth of the north pole, is more
like eighty nine point five or somethinglike that. But it's basically straight above
the Earth. Well, there won'talways be. As the Earth rotates,
it also wobbles. It's this massivespinning ball. And in fact, I
(04:00):
think around ten thousand years from now, the north star will be Vega Bright
starting the constellation Lyra. So ifI was still around in ten thousand years,
would I notice a difference in whenthe seasons were or would the seasons
change because of that? Well,I think inevitably the seasons would I don't
(04:21):
know if seasons, but climate certainly, I mean, the tilt of the
Earth would be different by several degrees. So we live at about the forty
ninth degree north of the equator,and it gives us a particular climate for
our latitude. Yeah, at acertain distant time in the future, will
(04:43):
still be forty nine degrees north ofthe equator, but the angle of the
Sun approaching us will be different.So I'm not sure exactly what if we'll
be warmer or colder, but it'llcertainly be different, right because technically,
if we call the equator the partthat's closest to the Sun, if we
wobble, the equator might not bethe closest part to the Sun anymore.
(05:08):
Yeah, And it's an interesting question. And this is the sort of thing
I do in teaching all the time, because you raised an interesting point,
which is right now, with theEarth's axis tilting towards polaris, that gives
us a twenty three point five degreetilt to what's called the ecliptic. The
ecliptic is the straight line between theSun and the Earth, if you can
picture that. So the Earth isnot perpendicular to that straight line. It's
(05:31):
tilted twenty three and a half degrees, and it's that tilt that gives us
our seasons. Now, when thepole is tilted towards Vega, will be
more than twenty three and a halfdegrees or less than twenty three and a
half degrees. Well, I don'tactually know. I don't think I've ever
been asked that question, nor haveI ever considered that question. You just
(05:53):
kind of raised it a second ago, and and you see, this is
such a teachable moment because when you'rein a classroom and students ask a question
like that, you pause and youthink, oh, wait, that was
actually a really good question. Andof course these days, it's very easy
to say to somebody here, stop, let's look that up right now.
(06:15):
And if we did, and I'mnot going to right now because it's kind
of awkward when you're doing a liverecording, but if I was in a
classroom, I would definitely say,let's just look that up. Is there
anybody who's looked into whether or notthe angle of the tilt would be more
or less than twenty three and ahalf degrees. I'm sure somebody's worked it
out, Yeah, and then you'dhave that information. And you know what
(06:38):
would happened is next time somebody askedme that question, I'd have the answer.
That's right. And in fact,next time the topic comes up,
the question may not come up,but I'll still have the answer, and
I just may bring it up andmake this a point of interest and a
point of discussion and maybe even wrapthat around to a discret ession around climate
(07:00):
change and what are the implications ofnatural processes versus anthropogenic Okay, processes of
climate change? Okay, I'm goingto take us back to the moon,
right, Okay, because that's wherewe started. And I'm an orderly I
(07:20):
like things to go in a linearfashion, and I'm all over the place.
Yes, but what would you Whatshould I know about the moon?
Like, I don't. I mean, I see it. I know it
has different stages that it looks like. You know, it's a full moon
(07:42):
and it's not a full a crescentmoon. And but what should I know
If I was to consider myself somewhateducated about space, I should know about
the moon? What should I knowabout the moon? Well, you're just
describing the phases a moment, youcall them stage, But they really called
phase. And the lunar cycle isapproximately twenty eight days, which can be
(08:07):
measured from a couple of different pointsof view, depending on if you're measuring
the orbit of the Moon based onthe position relative to Earth or relative to
the stars. But it's approximately twentyeight days, and it goes from full
to full yep, okay yep.And the beginning of the lunar cycle I
like to always think of as beingnew the new moon is when it's directly
(08:31):
between the Earth and the Sun.So what we would see there would be
no moon in the evening. Themoon would be up in the day at
the same time as the Sun rightso the illuminated side of the Moon would
be facing away from us, andthe dark side of the Moon would be
facing towards us, so we wouldn'tsee the moon at all. This is
(08:52):
the point where it's possible there couldbe a solar eclipse. If the moon
happened to be right on the eclipticduring full moon, you'd have a solar
eclipse somewhere. A solar eclipse doesn'tactually block out the light of the Sun
to the entire Earth. In fact, the shadow of the moon is around
three hundred kilometers in diameters, soyou'd have to be in that circle in
(09:16):
order to even know that there's asolar eclipse. And so it's quite a
rare thing, indeed, for asolar eclipse to pass over your house.
But the moon will begin is marcharound the Earth at new moon and anywhere
from new until full. We callthose waxing phases. So you go through
(09:39):
the waxing crescent, and then thefirst quarter and then the waxing gibbis.
Gibbis is that odd shape that's sortof not full but bigger than half.
And the waxing phases are the onesthat you see in the evening at sunset.
So if you look towards the sunsetand you see a crescent moon,
that would be a waxing crescent.And what you'll notice is that the right
(10:03):
side of the moon is sort ofthe crescent is the right side of the
moon, the side that's facing thesun, and sort of it makes geometrical
sense that that's the side. Andthen when it gets to be full,
the moon is now completely opposite sothe Earth from the sun. So as
the sun sets, the moon willrise, okay, and once it's past
(10:24):
full it now is what we callwaning, and you get into a waning
gibbus, and then a third quarterand then a waning crescent, and each
of these phases, I like tothink that the crescent, gibbus, crescent,
each of them is about a weeklong. So if it was February
fifth, for example, and let'ssay that there was a new moon,
(10:48):
then February twelfth, there'd be firstquarter, February nineteenth there'd be full moon.
To twenty sixth, they'll be thirdquarter, and then early March whatever
that would be, like March secondor third, it would be back to
new moon again, and even throughthe full inner cycle and just carries on
around the Earth round a round round. She goes round and around, which
(11:09):
is, by the way, aninteresting thing you could do. You could
actually take that some simple geometry andif you worked out the circumference of that
circle, knowing that the moon ison average three hundred and eighty four thousand,
four hundred kilometers away, which isan interesting Yeah, that's that's an
interesting number to know, like howfar away is the moon? And in
(11:31):
metric terms, it's three hundred andeighty four thousand, four hundred kilometers well,
that's the radius of what's approximately acircle. Well, if I multiply
the radius by two and then multiplythat by pie, I would get the
circumference. Then if I divided thatthe moon comforts of the orbit of the
moon, Oh yeah, gotcha.Then if I divided that by the time,
(11:56):
which is about twenty eight days,I mean, it'd be very easy
to look up. We could lookup right now if we wanted to.
Anybody could how many days is itexactly? How many hours is it exactly?
But let's say if we call ittwenty eight, twenty eight times twenty
four is the number of hours.So I could take that distance of the
circumference and divide by that number ofhours, and I would have kilometers per
(12:18):
hour per hour. We know howfast the moon is traveling, and in
fact we've done this and it worksout to about thirty five hundred thirty four
to thirty five hundred kilometers per hourhour and so which is interesting because then
you'll say, I'll say to mystudents, like tonight, go out and
look at the moon and tell mesomething. Does it look like it's moving
thirty five hundred kilometers per hour?And it doesn't it looks like it's just
(12:39):
sitting there. However, if youcome back and look at the moon tomorrow
night, looking at the same timeof evening, you'll notice that it's moved
several degrees to your left towards theeast. And what can what you can
do with that is just consider thatif a circle is three hundred and sixty
(13:00):
ease and the and the let's justround it to thirty days. That that's
wrong. I know it's wrong.Let's just round it to thirty days for
ease of math. Three sixty dividedby thirty would be twelve. That means
the moon moves eleven or twelve degreesevery twenty four hours, and it would
(13:22):
be moving to the east to yourleft. So if I'm looking south out,
if you're looking south yea heah,And if we're in the northern hemisphere,
you would be looking south. Okay, that's why you said that,
Like, how do you know you'relooking left? Yeah, okay, it's
always the moon will always be tothe south if you're in the northern hemisphere
because it orbits Earth approximately around theequator approximately. Okay, I don't think
(13:48):
I knew that either. You nowealth of knowledge, So you want to
know the phases. Now we knowthe distance and how fast it goes around
the Earth. So you said atthe beginning when we got into the wobble
question that it I think you usethe word stabilizes the Earth. Is that
(14:11):
because it has a bit of agravitational pull on the Earth. Is that
what you mean? Yeah, it'snot even just a bit. It's a
significant gravitational pull on the Earth.Isaac Newton famous for his formula g mm
over R squared, the two m'sbeing the mass of the central body and
the mass of the orbiting body,and then R is the distance between them.
(14:35):
And so the Earth and the Moonexert a force upon each other.
The Earth of course larger because itis more massive. But what we notice,
especially when when it comes to thegravity effect on the Earth from the
Moon, is the tides. Right, I was going to That's where I
was going to go next. Goahead, do you have a question that
(14:56):
for me on that? Well,have you ever experienced ti? I have
experienced tides, Yes, I have, and I do know that they are
from the gravitational pull of the Moon, but I don't so when it's a
full moon, it exerts more ofa pull. Well, it does,
(15:18):
in fact, this is that whythe tides change. But yet it's only
a full moon once every twenty eightdays, but the tides are twice a
day essentially, So why is therea high tide and a low tide twice
every day? How does because themoon doesn't really change its I mean,
(15:41):
I guess it kind of changes itsposition, but it I don't get how
that would work. I mean,it's a very dynamic system. The Moon's
always moving, the Earth is alwaysrotating. Yeah, the moon is to
move each day at thirty five hundredkilometers per hour and the Earth is rotating
on its axis at about sixteen hundredkilometers per hour. So there's constant motion
(16:06):
that we don't really notice because we'reso small compared to such large systems.
But the part of the movement,yeah, we're inside that movement. But
we do get a high and alow twice a day. And first of
all, with regard to the fullmoon, it is true because the tides
are higher, the highs are higher, and the lows are lower, simply
(16:27):
because the alignment of the Earth,Sun, Moon, the straight line alignment.
At full moon, you get theaccentuated effect of the Sun's gravity as
well as the Moon's gravity, andso you have this extra tugue. And
the same thing happens when it's atnew Moon, because then you still have
a straight line effect. Picture afirst quarter or a third quarter. It's
(16:49):
actually a right angle. The sunEarth Moon is a right angle, and
so the effect of the Sun andthe effect of the Moon somewhat negate each
other. And it's that that stageof the tide that you'll have a lower
high and a higher low right sothe water doesn't move in and out just
as much. But the reason weget two highs per day and two lowes
(17:11):
per day is because of the rotationof the Earth. The Moon is always
tugging on the ocean and the andthe rotation of Earth kind of moves through
that gravitational tug and because of therotation, about every six hours, the
shift of the Earth causes the effectto sort of affect different parts of the
(17:33):
ocean. It's you know, reallyon a podcast is hard just going to
say. You probably could show me. In fact, go to my YouTube
channel is called Beyond the Sky signsthree sixty beyond the Sky and I do
a video on explaining the tides,and there's a bit of a visual there
(17:56):
that helps you understand it. Right. But the grave the moon not only
brings about ties, but it alsostabilizes the wobble. They say that if
it weren't for our moon, wecould end up wobbling, similar to Venus,
where the Venus's rotation is opposite toEarth, so that the if you're
(18:18):
on Venus, the sun would risein the west and set in the east.
And the thought was, is itjust that the planet Venus rotates in
the opposite direction we would call thatretrograde, or in fact, is it
upside down? Is the rotation correct? But the planet is just upside down?
And one thing of interest is thatVenus has no moon, so there's
(18:41):
great speculation that Venus's rotation is correct. It's just that it's upside down because
of the wobble, unstabilized because it'sgot no moon. So we believe that
our moon is very essential to astable climate and as well detection. The
moon has been able to protect us. If you look at the surface of
(19:03):
the Moon, it's covered in craters. Many of those impacts could have hit
Earth. So it is now believethat if we want to find another planet
in the galaxy with life advanced life, life has been able to evolve for
millions and perhaps billions of years,that that planet is going to need a
moon like ours. Great, it'salmost like somebody said it there on purpose.
(19:29):
Maybe, Well, and the thingis the moon is it is like
our bodyguard, and it's quite largefor a planet our size. There was
a thought at one time that maybeEarth captured the Moon. Perhaps it was
an asteroid that had been knocked offcourse by perhaps the gravity of Jupiter and
(19:51):
is whizzing by, and maybe Earthcaught it into its gravitational Well, but
that's not the case anymore. Whenthe astronauts from the Apollo Erab brought back
rock from the Moon, they lookedat the chemistry, the geochemistry, and
they found that it was very similarto Earth's crust. And the speculation is
now that the Moon is actually borneout of the Earth, that it was
(20:15):
the Earth was struck by something.They're so sure of this theory actually that
they've named that thing the thing thatstruck Earth. They've named it thea thhe
A. They say that a planet, rogue planet struck Earth and ejected the
matter up into orbit around and thatmatter coalesced, and they've done computer modeling
(20:36):
of this and it can happen veryvery quickly, much quicker than you can
imagine. But all that debris thatcame out of Earth formed the Moon.
And because the moon really has Earth. Yeah, but the giant impact theories,
it's sort of the accepted scientific theorywas to where the Moon came from.
And the Earth has no business havinga moon as big as ours.
Only planets like Jupiter and Saturn havemoons. That so eyes Mars has two
(21:02):
moons, but they're little rocks.They're thirty fifty kilometers in diameter, whereas
our moon is somewhere around thirty fourhundred kilometers in some of it. It's
about a quarter of the size ofEarth. It's much too big for a
planet our size. So when theyare going back there now, they haven't
(21:22):
been in several years, that Imean quite a while. Yeah, in
correct, in nineteen seventy two wasthe last time humans were there. So
why all of a sudden are theywanting to go back there again? What's
their goal? What are they hopingto find? Or do you know,
well, you know, isn't itthe next great quest to become multiplanetary.
(21:44):
We hear Elon Musk saying that allthe time. Yeah, you know,
so it's just a stage of gettingthere. I mean, yeah, it's
the next stage of development. Imean you could do a whole podcast episode
on you know, why is ittaking this long and to go back to
the Moon? I mean they wantto live on the Moon. Yeah,
Like when they went there in thelate sixties and early seventies with the Apollo
(22:07):
mission, the astronauts were there forless than twenty four hours before they return
home. And the plan now withArtemis is that this will be a permanent
presence of humanity on the Moon.So it'll maybe it'll start off something like
the space station, but actually beyondthe Moon. Yeah possibly, Yeah,
do research and see and crews willshift in and out and ultimately is a
(22:32):
perfect living in these extremely harsh environmentsthe next next decade perhaps Mars. Okay,
cool, cool, Well that's apretty good start. I think maybe
maybe we can carry on on anotherday and we can hit up another topic.
(22:55):
Yeah, where we go from there, we will blast off to next
to infinity and beyond. But youknow, when it comes to uh to
teaching, I'll tell you one thing, students do like these sort of topics,
and they do show an interest inthese things. Teachers, the obligation,
(23:17):
the sort of the satisfaction of teachingcomes from learning these things and bringing
them to the class and bring them, bring them to your students in the
form of a story, bring themin terms in terms of just conversation,
and allow the students to kind ofgo wow, really like kind of like
what you're just doing, you know, like what I just did. If
(23:40):
you're a student in my class,That's how I would have presented it,
just like that. No cool,no power points. You might have brought
up a picture. Oh yeah,Oh for sure, I would have put
up a picture of the moon andI would have but no canned power points.
I'm I'm much more inclined to bringpictures of things that come up.
(24:03):
It's very easy to google them andthere they are. And just point these
things out to the students and letthem kind of guide the guide the conversation
a little bit. Just sort ofas you did there, you go to
help you further with your learning aboutthe moon and preparation for teaching about it.
(24:25):
Back in February of twenty one,I did an episode called Need help
teaching about the moon. It wasepisode thirty. You'll find it early on
in my podcast career, but it'squite full of resources and information and teachable
ideas, so be sure to checkthat one out. And while you're scrolling
through the titles of Science three sixty, see if there's anything else in there
(24:48):
in the list of titles that youmight be interested in listening to that will
help you with your teaching. I'vehad guests on that talked about all kinds
of scientific topics, all geared towardshelping you the teacher feel more equipped to
go into your classroom to bring interesting, relevant and up to date content to
your students. And if you havea chance, please leave a rating and
(25:11):
a review and subscribe on Apple andSpotify. And until our next time,
I thank you for listening and I'llsee you soon. Bye for now.
This is such a teachable moment becausewhen you're in a classroom and students ask
a question like that, you pauseand you think, oh, wait,
that was actually a really good question. If I was in a classroom,
I would definitely say let's just lookthat up. And you know what would
happened is next time somebody asked methat question, I'd have the answer that's
right, And in fact, nexttime the topic comes up, the question
(00:23):
may not come up, but I'llstill have the answer, and I just
may bring it up right and makethis a point of interest and a point
of discussion. Welcome back to anotherepisode of Science three sixty. This is
Cheryl Stevenson and today I'm taking overfor Tim as the host. Yes it's
(00:48):
true and our conversation orbits around themoon, but the bigger lesson is as
a teacher, learning it well enoughto be able to talk about it,
but at the same time knowing tosay I don't know when you just don't
know. Cople listen. This podcastis a proud member of the Teach Better
(01:11):
Podcast Network, Better Today, BetterTomorrow, and the podcast to Get You
There. Explore more podcasts at wwwdot Teach Better Podcastnetwork dot com. Now
let's get onto the episode. So, Tim, I thought that I would
ask you a few more specific questions, kind of carrying on from last time.
(01:33):
But I know you teach astronomy.So when you teach about space and
people don't know anything about it,what do you usually like to start with?
What do you Because there's so muchyou could choose, where do you
start hm it? I'd have tosay I start with the the things that
(01:57):
most people don't If you asked anybodyto you know, what's the most what's
your most interesting thing or most whatdo you wonder the most about space?
Most people say, oh, blackholes, wormholes, all kinds of very
obscure things that have limited you know, like there's not a specific answer.
(02:20):
So as opposed to that, Iwould generally start with things like the Moon
for example. Okay, you know, like our nearest neighbor. So for
example, what would you want toknow about the moon? What would I
want to know about the Moon?Why? Truthfully, I don't know a
lot about the Moon except for humanswent there. Yeah, I don't know
(02:46):
even how many times we went there. Did we only land there the one
time? Nope? Nope? Infact, there were six landings on the
landing, six human landings on theMoon, and we're coming up to more
with the Artemis mission, and thenext year or two we're going to start
to see that happening more and more. But you know, the Moon is
(03:12):
some will say now an essential partof any planet that has life. The
Moon stabilizes our rotation, keeps aplanet from wobbling. Planet wobbles Earth.
Yeah, planet Earth wobbles. There'sa twenty six thousand year wobble. It's
called precession. And the way wenotice now is that the axis of the
(03:37):
Earth points straight at the north starPolaris, or at least very close,
something like instead of ninety degrees straightnorth of the north pole, is more
like eighty nine point five or somethinglike that. But it's basically straight above
the Earth. Well, there won'talways be. As the Earth rotates,
it also wobbles. It's this massivespinning ball. And in fact, I
(04:00):
think around ten thousand years from now, the north star will be Vega Bright
starting the constellation Lyra. So ifI was still around in ten thousand years,
would I notice a difference in whenthe seasons were or would the seasons
change because of that? Well,I think inevitably the seasons would I don't
(04:21):
know if seasons, but climate certainly, I mean, the tilt of the
Earth would be different by several degrees. So we live at about the forty
ninth degree north of the equator,and it gives us a particular climate for
our latitude. Yeah, at acertain distant time in the future, will
(04:43):
still be forty nine degrees north ofthe equator, but the angle of the
Sun approaching us will be different.So I'm not sure exactly what if we'll
be warmer or colder, but it'llcertainly be different, right because technically,
if we call the equator the partthat's closest to the Sun, if we
wobble, the equator might not bethe closest part to the Sun anymore.
(05:08):
Yeah, And it's an interesting question. And this is the sort of thing
I do in teaching all the time, because you raised an interesting point,
which is right now, with theEarth's axis tilting towards polaris, that gives
us a twenty three point five degreetilt to what's called the ecliptic. The
ecliptic is the straight line between theSun and the Earth, if you can
picture that. So the Earth isnot perpendicular to that straight line. It's
(05:31):
tilted twenty three and a half degrees, and it's that tilt that gives us
our seasons. Now, when thepole is tilted towards Vega, will be
more than twenty three and a halfdegrees or less than twenty three and a
half degrees. Well, I don'tactually know. I don't think I've ever
been asked that question, nor haveI ever considered that question. You just
(05:53):
kind of raised it a second ago, and and you see, this is
such a teachable moment because when you'rein a classroom and students ask a question
like that, you pause and youthink, oh, wait, that was
actually a really good question. Andof course these days, it's very easy
to say to somebody here, stop, let's look that up right now.
(06:15):
And if we did, and I'mnot going to right now because it's kind
of awkward when you're doing a liverecording, but if I was in a
classroom, I would definitely say,let's just look that up. Is there
anybody who's looked into whether or notthe angle of the tilt would be more
or less than twenty three and ahalf degrees. I'm sure somebody's worked it
out, Yeah, and then you'dhave that information. And you know what
(06:38):
would happened is next time somebody askedme that question, I'd have the answer.
That's right. And in fact,next time the topic comes up,
the question may not come up,but I'll still have the answer, and
I just may bring it up andmake this a point of interest and a
point of discussion and maybe even wrapthat around to a discret ession around climate
(07:00):
change and what are the implications ofnatural processes versus anthropogenic Okay, processes of
climate change? Okay, I'm goingto take us back to the moon,
right, Okay, because that's wherewe started. And I'm an orderly I
(07:20):
like things to go in a linearfashion, and I'm all over the place.
Yes, but what would you Whatshould I know about the moon?
Like, I don't. I mean, I see it. I know it
has different stages that it looks like. You know, it's a full moon
(07:42):
and it's not a full a crescentmoon. And but what should I know
If I was to consider myself somewhateducated about space, I should know about
the moon? What should I knowabout the moon? Well, you're just
describing the phases a moment, youcall them stage, But they really called
phase. And the lunar cycle isapproximately twenty eight days, which can be
(08:07):
measured from a couple of different pointsof view, depending on if you're measuring
the orbit of the Moon based onthe position relative to Earth or relative to
the stars. But it's approximately twentyeight days, and it goes from full
to full yep, okay yep.And the beginning of the lunar cycle I
like to always think of as beingnew the new moon is when it's directly
(08:31):
between the Earth and the Sun.So what we would see there would be
no moon in the evening. Themoon would be up in the day at
the same time as the Sun rightso the illuminated side of the Moon would
be facing away from us, andthe dark side of the Moon would be
facing towards us, so we wouldn'tsee the moon at all. This is
(08:52):
the point where it's possible there couldbe a solar eclipse. If the moon
happened to be right on the eclipticduring full moon, you'd have a solar
eclipse somewhere. A solar eclipse doesn'tactually block out the light of the Sun
to the entire Earth. In fact, the shadow of the moon is around
three hundred kilometers in diameters, soyou'd have to be in that circle in
(09:16):
order to even know that there's asolar eclipse. And so it's quite a
rare thing, indeed, for asolar eclipse to pass over your house.
But the moon will begin is marcharound the Earth at new moon and anywhere
from new until full. We callthose waxing phases. So you go through
(09:39):
the waxing crescent, and then thefirst quarter and then the waxing gibbis.
Gibbis is that odd shape that's sortof not full but bigger than half.
And the waxing phases are the onesthat you see in the evening at sunset.
So if you look towards the sunsetand you see a crescent moon,
that would be a waxing crescent.And what you'll notice is that the right
(10:03):
side of the moon is sort ofthe crescent is the right side of the
moon, the side that's facing thesun, and sort of it makes geometrical
sense that that's the side. Andthen when it gets to be full,
the moon is now completely opposite sothe Earth from the sun. So as
the sun sets, the moon willrise, okay, and once it's past
(10:24):
full it now is what we callwaning, and you get into a waning
gibbus, and then a third quarterand then a waning crescent, and each
of these phases, I like tothink that the crescent, gibbus, crescent,
each of them is about a weeklong. So if it was February
fifth, for example, and let'ssay that there was a new moon,
(10:48):
then February twelfth, there'd be firstquarter, February nineteenth there'd be full moon.
To twenty sixth, they'll be thirdquarter, and then early March whatever
that would be, like March secondor third, it would be back to
new moon again, and even throughthe full inner cycle and just carries on
around the Earth round a round round. She goes round and around, which
(11:09):
is, by the way, aninteresting thing you could do. You could
actually take that some simple geometry andif you worked out the circumference of that
circle, knowing that the moon ison average three hundred and eighty four thousand,
four hundred kilometers away, which isan interesting Yeah, that's that's an
interesting number to know, like howfar away is the moon? And in
(11:31):
metric terms, it's three hundred andeighty four thousand, four hundred kilometers well,
that's the radius of what's approximately acircle. Well, if I multiply
the radius by two and then multiplythat by pie, I would get the
circumference. Then if I divided thatthe moon comforts of the orbit of the
moon, Oh yeah, gotcha.Then if I divided that by the time,
(11:56):
which is about twenty eight days,I mean, it'd be very easy
to look up. We could lookup right now if we wanted to.
Anybody could how many days is itexactly? How many hours is it exactly?
But let's say if we call ittwenty eight, twenty eight times twenty
four is the number of hours.So I could take that distance of the
circumference and divide by that number ofhours, and I would have kilometers per
(12:18):
hour per hour. We know howfast the moon is traveling, and in
fact we've done this and it worksout to about thirty five hundred thirty four
to thirty five hundred kilometers per hourhour and so which is interesting because then
you'll say, I'll say to mystudents, like tonight, go out and
look at the moon and tell mesomething. Does it look like it's moving
thirty five hundred kilometers per hour?And it doesn't it looks like it's just
(12:39):
sitting there. However, if youcome back and look at the moon tomorrow
night, looking at the same timeof evening, you'll notice that it's moved
several degrees to your left towards theeast. And what can what you can
do with that is just consider thatif a circle is three hundred and sixty
(13:00):
ease and the and the let's justround it to thirty days. That that's
wrong. I know it's wrong.Let's just round it to thirty days for
ease of math. Three sixty dividedby thirty would be twelve. That means
the moon moves eleven or twelve degreesevery twenty four hours, and it would
(13:22):
be moving to the east to yourleft. So if I'm looking south out,
if you're looking south yea heah,And if we're in the northern hemisphere,
you would be looking south. Okay, that's why you said that,
Like, how do you know you'relooking left? Yeah, okay, it's
always the moon will always be tothe south if you're in the northern hemisphere
because it orbits Earth approximately around theequator approximately. Okay, I don't think
(13:48):
I knew that either. You nowealth of knowledge, So you want to
know the phases. Now we knowthe distance and how fast it goes around
the Earth. So you said atthe beginning when we got into the wobble
question that it I think you usethe word stabilizes the Earth. Is that
(14:11):
because it has a bit of agravitational pull on the Earth. Is that
what you mean? Yeah, it'snot even just a bit. It's a
significant gravitational pull on the Earth.Isaac Newton famous for his formula g mm
over R squared, the two m'sbeing the mass of the central body and
the mass of the orbiting body,and then R is the distance between them.
(14:35):
And so the Earth and the Moonexert a force upon each other.
The Earth of course larger because itis more massive. But what we notice,
especially when when it comes to thegravity effect on the Earth from the
Moon, is the tides. Right, I was going to That's where I
was going to go next. Goahead, do you have a question that
(14:56):
for me on that? Well,have you ever experienced ti? I have
experienced tides, Yes, I have, and I do know that they are
from the gravitational pull of the Moon, but I don't so when it's a
full moon, it exerts more ofa pull. Well, it does,
(15:18):
in fact, this is that whythe tides change. But yet it's only
a full moon once every twenty eightdays, but the tides are twice a
day essentially, So why is therea high tide and a low tide twice
every day? How does because themoon doesn't really change its I mean,
(15:41):
I guess it kind of changes itsposition, but it I don't get how
that would work. I mean,it's a very dynamic system. The Moon's
always moving, the Earth is alwaysrotating. Yeah, the moon is to
move each day at thirty five hundredkilometers per hour and the Earth is rotating
on its axis at about sixteen hundredkilometers per hour. So there's constant motion
(16:06):
that we don't really notice because we'reso small compared to such large systems.
But the part of the movement,yeah, we're inside that movement. But
we do get a high and alow twice a day. And first of
all, with regard to the fullmoon, it is true because the tides
are higher, the highs are higher, and the lows are lower, simply
(16:27):
because the alignment of the Earth,Sun, Moon, the straight line alignment.
At full moon, you get theaccentuated effect of the Sun's gravity as
well as the Moon's gravity, andso you have this extra tugue. And
the same thing happens when it's atnew Moon, because then you still have
a straight line effect. Picture afirst quarter or a third quarter. It's
(16:49):
actually a right angle. The sunEarth Moon is a right angle, and
so the effect of the Sun andthe effect of the Moon somewhat negate each
other. And it's that that stageof the tide that you'll have a lower
high and a higher low right sothe water doesn't move in and out just
as much. But the reason weget two highs per day and two lowes
(17:11):
per day is because of the rotationof the Earth. The Moon is always
tugging on the ocean and the andthe rotation of Earth kind of moves through
that gravitational tug and because of therotation, about every six hours, the
shift of the Earth causes the effectto sort of affect different parts of the
(17:33):
ocean. It's you know, reallyon a podcast is hard just going to
say. You probably could show me. In fact, go to my YouTube
channel is called Beyond the Sky signsthree sixty beyond the Sky and I do
a video on explaining the tides,and there's a bit of a visual there
(17:56):
that helps you understand it. Right. But the grave the moon not only
brings about ties, but it alsostabilizes the wobble. They say that if
it weren't for our moon, wecould end up wobbling, similar to Venus,
where the Venus's rotation is opposite toEarth, so that the if you're
(18:18):
on Venus, the sun would risein the west and set in the east.
And the thought was, is itjust that the planet Venus rotates in
the opposite direction we would call thatretrograde, or in fact, is it
upside down? Is the rotation correct? But the planet is just upside down?
And one thing of interest is thatVenus has no moon, so there's
(18:41):
great speculation that Venus's rotation is correct. It's just that it's upside down because
of the wobble, unstabilized because it'sgot no moon. So we believe that
our moon is very essential to astable climate and as well detection. The
moon has been able to protect us. If you look at the surface of
(19:03):
the Moon, it's covered in craters. Many of those impacts could have hit
Earth. So it is now believethat if we want to find another planet
in the galaxy with life advanced life, life has been able to evolve for
millions and perhaps billions of years,that that planet is going to need a
moon like ours. Great, it'salmost like somebody said it there on purpose.
(19:29):
Maybe, Well, and the thingis the moon is it is like
our bodyguard, and it's quite largefor a planet our size. There was
a thought at one time that maybeEarth captured the Moon. Perhaps it was
an asteroid that had been knocked offcourse by perhaps the gravity of Jupiter and
(19:51):
is whizzing by, and maybe Earthcaught it into its gravitational Well, but
that's not the case anymore. Whenthe astronauts from the Apollo Erab brought back
rock from the Moon, they lookedat the chemistry, the geochemistry, and
they found that it was very similarto Earth's crust. And the speculation is
now that the Moon is actually borneout of the Earth, that it was
(20:15):
the Earth was struck by something.They're so sure of this theory actually that
they've named that thing the thing thatstruck Earth. They've named it thea thhe
A. They say that a planet, rogue planet struck Earth and ejected the
matter up into orbit around and thatmatter coalesced, and they've done computer modeling
(20:36):
of this and it can happen veryvery quickly, much quicker than you can
imagine. But all that debris thatcame out of Earth formed the Moon.
And because the moon really has Earth. Yeah, but the giant impact theories,
it's sort of the accepted scientific theorywas to where the Moon came from.
And the Earth has no business havinga moon as big as ours.
Only planets like Jupiter and Saturn havemoons. That so eyes Mars has two
(21:02):
moons, but they're little rocks.They're thirty fifty kilometers in diameter, whereas
our moon is somewhere around thirty fourhundred kilometers in some of it. It's
about a quarter of the size ofEarth. It's much too big for a
planet our size. So when theyare going back there now, they haven't
(21:22):
been in several years, that Imean quite a while. Yeah, in
correct, in nineteen seventy two wasthe last time humans were there. So
why all of a sudden are theywanting to go back there again? What's
their goal? What are they hopingto find? Or do you know,
well, you know, isn't itthe next great quest to become multiplanetary.
(21:44):
We hear Elon Musk saying that allthe time. Yeah, you know,
so it's just a stage of gettingthere. I mean, yeah, it's
the next stage of development. Imean you could do a whole podcast episode
on you know, why is ittaking this long and to go back to
the Moon? I mean they wantto live on the Moon. Yeah,
Like when they went there in thelate sixties and early seventies with the Apollo
(22:07):
mission, the astronauts were there forless than twenty four hours before they return
home. And the plan now withArtemis is that this will be a permanent
presence of humanity on the Moon.So it'll maybe it'll start off something like
the space station, but actually beyondthe Moon. Yeah possibly, Yeah,
do research and see and crews willshift in and out and ultimately is a
(22:32):
perfect living in these extremely harsh environmentsthe next next decade perhaps Mars. Okay,
cool, cool, Well that's apretty good start. I think maybe
maybe we can carry on on anotherday and we can hit up another topic.
(22:55):
Yeah, where we go from there, we will blast off to next
to infinity and beyond. But youknow, when it comes to uh to
teaching, I'll tell you one thing, students do like these sort of topics,
and they do show an interest inthese things. Teachers, the obligation,
(23:17):
the sort of the satisfaction of teachingcomes from learning these things and bringing
them to the class and bring them, bring them to your students in the
form of a story, bring themin terms in terms of just conversation,
and allow the students to kind ofgo wow, really like kind of like
what you're just doing, you know, like what I just did. If
(23:40):
you're a student in my class,That's how I would have presented it,
just like that. No cool,no power points. You might have brought
up a picture. Oh yeah,Oh for sure, I would have put
up a picture of the moon andI would have but no canned power points.
I'm I'm much more inclined to bringpictures of things that come up.
(24:03):
It's very easy to google them andthere they are. And just point these
things out to the students and letthem kind of guide the guide the conversation
a little bit. Just sort ofas you did there, you go to
help you further with your learning aboutthe moon and preparation for teaching about it.
(24:25):
Back in February of twenty one,I did an episode called Need help
teaching about the moon. It wasepisode thirty. You'll find it early on
in my podcast career, but it'squite full of resources and information and teachable
ideas, so be sure to checkthat one out. And while you're scrolling
through the titles of Science three sixty, see if there's anything else in there
(24:48):
in the list of titles that youmight be interested in listening to that will
help you with your teaching. I'vehad guests on that talked about all kinds
of scientific topics, all geared towardshelping you the teacher feel more equipped to
go into your classroom to bring interesting, relevant and up to date content to
your students. And if you havea chance, please leave a rating and
(25:11):
a review and subscribe on Apple andSpotify. And until our next time,
I thank you for listening and I'llsee you soon. Bye for now.
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