What's Your Galactic Address?

Introduction

Class: 9th Grade Earth Science

Topic: Your Galactic Address!

Approximate Completion Time: 45 Minutes

Key Words: Galactic Address, Supercluster, Astronomy

Your Mission: Your objective, in this WebQuest, is to realize your place in our massive Universe! You will travel through the earthly universe of the Internet to find out where we are. You will need to create a Word document that answers the questions you come across. You will need to include some screen shots of your progress. This assignment will be worked on for one class period and you will have a week to complete the remainder of the assignment if you do not finish.

Task

You will need to create a Word document, in order to record your repsonses to the following procedures. Save this document as:

{insert your name here}_GalacticAddress.docx

and email it to me when it is completed.

The procedures will ask you to take screen shots and edit certain things with MS Paint. If you run into trouble, please ask for help.

Now, let's find out your Galactic Address!

Photo By Blair Fraser

Process

What is your galactic address?

First, you need to find your position is the most accurate, close manner. Think small. The first coordinates I want you to determine is your desk relative to the classroom. Mark the location of your desk on this image (hint: you will need to copy this photo and paste it into your document in order for you to circle your location):

Now, right down a short description of your desk location.

Now you have your smallest point of reference for your galactic address! Let's move to a larger scale. You must record your classroom number and school.

Once you have that information, add the town, county, and state in which our school resides. What country are we in?

What should you have recorded?

Your desks location (picture and description).
Your classroom number, school, town, county, state, and country.

Now, the fun begins. Time to get astronomical. Let's start by answer some questions about our solar system. Use the following site to help you answer the questions (if you use another resource, be sure to cite it):

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/index.cfm

List the eight major planets, 1 being the farthest from the Sun.

What lies between Mars and its further-from-the-sun planetary neighbor?

What does the word “perihelion” mean?

What planet has the smallest perihelion?

What is the perihelion of that planet (UNITS)?

Read the text on the right column and then take the quiz found here:

http://claweb.cla.unipd.it/home/mcanapero/exercises/planets.htm

When you are done with the quiz, take a screen shot of your final score and paste image in your word document (if you don’t know how to do this, ask Google).

Let’s move farther away. Take the tour at the following link and answer the questions in your word document:

http://stars.chromeexperiments.com/

What is a light year?

Is a light year a measure of time, distance, or speed?

What is the nearest star system to us?

How far away is it?

What is the name of our Galaxy?

What is in the center of our Galaxy?

Let's Move Even Farther Out!

Watch the following video to see just how much of a tiny speck we are....in our massise Universe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENyyRwxpHo

For more information on the Super Cluster, check out: