Not only did we see that the changing color of the moon seems to be a reoccurring phenomenon, as well as the moon's phases, we are also seeing that a Supermoon or a Micromoon can appear, too!  And by a show of hands, we're seeing that these things have been seen by many of our classmates, meaning they show up again and again!

With lots of ideas out on the table, many ideas focused on these three areas:

1.  The moon moving closer and farther from the Earth.
2.  The Earth moving closer and farther to the moon as it spins for day/night.
3.  Some combination of possibly both the moon and the Earth moving different distances from each other.

It was unanimous that distance between the objects was playing a role, but what really happens when things get closer/farther from other things?  So what would this look like in a model?  Students showed their thinking and the following five models were discussed by the class:

Each of the following models highlighted important things we figured out, but didn't necessarily show them:

1. The moon does indeed orbit the Earth.
2.  The size of the moon doesn't change, just its appearance.  
3.  If the moon's size doesn't change, and it orbits the Earth, the only way to get it to appear bigger or smaller would mean its distance from the Earth would have to be closer at some points in its orbit and farther at others.

So we worked through our thinking and came to consensus!  The best news is that tomorrow is going to be a SuperMoon event alongside a lunar eclipse!  What?!?!?!

So while we figured out what gets the moon to appear different colors, we weren't quite sure why the moon appears different shapes. Like why is it full sometimes and only a small sliver other moments?

We made some predictions, and got all kinds of ideas!

Despite our conflicting responses, we decided to build a physical model to help us.  We know that the Earth, Sun, and Moon are involved in getting the Moon to appear differently, so we did the following:

1. Turned ourselves into the Earth!
2.  Used the Google Meet Screen as the Sun!
3.  Turned our pencil erasers into the moon by shading in half of the eraser dark (remember that one half of the moon is receiving sunlight while the other is dark)!

By turning ourselves around, we saw the patterns emerge as day and night. When we threw the moon up in the "sky" and turned our pencil erasers, aka the Moon, into the right position, we began to see the moon phases emerge.  What an "aha!" moment we all had!  We even saw where the moon had to be for us to see it during the daytime (like Mrs. Brinza's kids saw that one time during lunch outside last year).

So now that we know how we see the moon's shape change due to it's location and our own, we know where the moon has to be to see it during the day and at night.  But what we also noticed about the moon, is that it seems to change color and size!  We decided to focus on color first!

We read some articles on the moon's appearance, and because we know the moon isn't a light source itself, different colored light must be shining on the moon.  However, the light is always coming from the Sun, so is the light reflecting off other things in the sky.  We tested it with a white marker and some other random colored objects at Mrs. Brinza's house.  

We saw how different colored objects reflected different colored light onto the white marker, just like different colored objects must reflect different colored light to make the whitish-greyish colored moon appear different colors!  So cool!  Next steps, figuring out how the moon appears to change sizes (when we know it actually doesn't).

While we were figuring how the appearance of the sun's changing position, Mrs. Brinza shared a video of her own kids noticing something in the daytime sky--the moon!

We've all seen the moon in the daytime sky, and we recognize that it happens over and over again.  We know it's just not as frequently happening as the moon in the nighttime sky.

So why do we see the moon at nighttime?  Why does it change shapes, colors and sizes so much?  How can this help explain how we see the moon during the day, too?

We began thinking that we had so many questions, that we needed to first explain day and night.  From here, this would hopefully help us position the moon in both the nighttime and daytime sky.

So now that we know where we have to be to experience day and night, we're trying to see what happens as the moon orbits the Earth.  We are seeing that depending on where we are on the Earth, we see the moon differently, and we turned ourselves into the Earth, a pencil's eraser as the moon, and our Google Meet screen as the Sun!

With the errors in measurement both with the length and the angle at which our flashlights were located, we turned to using the Sun!  Check out the data that students collected!

We're seeing how even our data from outside continues to support what we know is true about shadows and the sun's position:

1.  Shadows are longest when the light source is low (like the Sun at sunrise and sunset).
2.  Shadows are the shortest when the light source is directly above an object (like at midday).
3.  Shadows appear on the opposite side of the object!

We graphed some data from a person's experiment with a meter stick!  Check out our work!

And then we returned to a prompt we did at the beginning between friends who were arguing about shadows!  See who we agree with and why!

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Regardless of where students were learning, each student gathered an object and a light source to mimic what happens with the sun in the sky and the object that casts a shadow. We measured the length as best we could and recorded our data!  We began to see some patterns emerge!

We have seen shadows be the longest right as the sun rise and again as the sun sets.  We're also seeing that the shadows are the shortest right at mid-day!  Looking at various students' data, we saw how some of their data didn't match what we typically see outside. We had a great conversation around why this was so!

Between measurement errors and not having the flashlight (sun) at the right angle, we figured we should turn to real data from the Sun!  So our next steps are to step outside!  Thank goodness we had some sunny days in the forecast!

We're still in the thick of hybrid/remote learning and any time we can get outside we certainly can!  We're appreciating the warmer weather here in Chicago and the sunny days can't be beat! 

Mrs. Brinza shared this picture with students, and they began to notice and wonder some things about the girl outside on a sunny day!

  Students noticed all kinds of things!

• Her shadow is obviously longer than she is tall!
• The shadow is dark and doesn't have color and detail like her outfit does.
• There's something in the background producing a longer, fainter shadow.  Her shadow is dark and sharp!
• There's a leaf next to her shadow and it isn't leaf-shaped at all!

They also began wondering lots of things, too!

• Why is her shadow so long?  
• When will the shadow get smaller?
• Why do some objects that are shorter than other things produce longer shadows?
• Does the time of day affect the shadow length? 
• Can her shadow disappear with the sun still out?  

We turned towards trying to explain all these questions, and students developed initial models!  Here are some ideas:

Since we had different ideas about shadows, we decided to come up with some investigations we could do to support our ideas:

With all the tests done and all the data collected, the results are in!  Students used data to figure out which mystery white powder was which!  Problem solved!  Mrs. Brinza can go on baking with the right ingredients identified!

Now that we see how data can be represented in graphical form from a data table, we're seeing how data that's in a table can help us figure out a problem Mrs. Brinza ran into with her own kids!

Mrs. Brinza and her kids love to bake together, but while Mrs. Brinza was making her favorite recipe, her mischievous kids (as you can tell by the photo to the left) mixed all the baking ingredients up!  Since Mrs. Brinza had a limited supply of them, she just couldn't get more, and instead tried to figure out what all of them were!  The crazy thing is though, is that all of the ingredients were white and really similar!

Brainstorming a bunch of tests we could do, students came up with the following tests:
1.  Taste test
2.  Feel test
3.  Smell test
4.  Look at them under a microscope
5.  Mix them with water to see how they react (like dissolve or not)

With Mrs. Brinza's guidance (and some constraints due to hybrid/remote learning), we agreed to do the following tests!

1.  Feel/texture test
2.  Water test (because we know some of these substances dissolve in water)
3. Vinegar test (because we know some of these substances would "bubble" with vinegar)
​4.  Iodine test (because it was a medical chemical Mrs. Brinza had lying around).
5. Heat test (because some of these substances might melt with heat)!

Here are the results from all our tests!  We now hope this data can help us figure out which substance/ingredient is which!

Since we're asynchronous due to state testing, we practiced some examples to see how looking at data can help us explain scientific phenomena!  We had three data sets to work through after Mrs. Brinza provided an example we worked through together with video!