Some students may have difficulty with this coordination, in which case you could have another student hold the Moon ball still while the first student moves their head (Earth) to see the eclipse.

This works best when students hold the Moon ball still, moving only their head to see the difference between partial and total eclipse.As noted in the activity, this may require holding it closer to their eye. Important: Be sure that you’ve selected balls that make it possible for the students to hold the Moon ball sin a way that will completely block their view of the Sun ball.By moving their heads, students see that there’s a fairly wide circle in which they can see a partial eclipse, but only a small central circle in which they see a total eclipse. The idea behind this activity is that the student’s head (Earth) is in the position of the screen in Figure 2.28.However, as noted at the beginning of the activity, in this case it is best to replace the light bulb with a ball, because otherwise the students would have to looking directly into the bright light, which would make this activity more difficult. Teacher Notes: This activity builds on the prior one so that students can see the difference between partial and total eclipses. But not all eclipses are total, as you can see easily with this next activity. Remind students to look back to Section 1.1.2, where they found that with a 3-inch (7.6 cm) diameter ball for Earth, the Moon would be an approximately 1-inch ball located about 7 1/2 feet (2.3 meters) away from Earth, while the Sun would be about 8 meters in diameter and located about 900 meters away.Įclipses can be spectacular sights, especially when they are what we call “total” eclipses. You may wish to point out that this activity is nowhere close to being to scale.So for now, we are focusing only on the phases at which eclipses are possible. Note that for this activity, we will ignore the fact that the Moon’s orbit is inclined to Earth’s – we’ll introduce this detail a bit later.

If you don’t have the Styrofoam balls, almost any small ball will work as the “Moon.” If you don’t have the lamps, you can instead use a ball (choose one that is larger than the Moon balls) to represent the Sun, and just tell students to imagine where the shadow would be cast. Teacher Notes: This activity works best if you represent the Sun with a bright light bulb on a lamp (with no lamp shade) placed on the center of a table and students use Styrofoam balls on a stick to represent the Moon.

Earth during lunar eclipse diagram