Modeling the Seasons

This hands-on activity demonstrates and explains the reasons for the seasons caused by the tilt of Earth on its axis as it orbits around the sun.

Go To:

https://www.exploratorium.edu/chaco/HTML/tg-seasons.pdf

Exploratorium

Notes From Our Reviewers

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Teaching Tips

We suggest the instructor runs through the activity in advance of students conducting it to ensure the globe model and room set up both work well.

About the Science

This activity demonstrates how the Earth moves around the sun. It helps explain that seasons occur on Earth because of the tilt of Earth on its axis as it rotates around the sun.

Comments from expert scientist:

Scientific strengths:

- Demonstrates clearly and visually how a day, a year and seasons work in regards to earth's tilt

Suggestions:

- It should be noted that the only way in which the seasons activity will work is if the North star is properly located based on where other students are standing, the diagram has it correctly.

About the Pedagogy

Students model the seasons with their own earth globes to assess how light intensity and day/night changes as the earth, on its tilted fixed axis, orbits around the sun.

Discussion questions and extension ideas are provided.

Technical Details

Note that most of the "background science" links and one of the "related media" links at the bottom are broken, but this supporting information is not essential to do the demonstration and can be found elsewhere.