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Online Puzzlemaker | Create Your Own Puzzle | Discovery Education Puzzlemaker

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Discovery Education’s Puzzlemaker provides teachers, students, and parents, the tools necessary to create crossword, puzzles, word search puzzles, mazes and more online!

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It's not often that we get a chance to see our planet's shadow, but a lunar eclipse gives us a fleeting glimpse. During these rare events, the full Moon rapidly darkens and then glows red as it enters the Earth's shadow. Though a lunar eclipse can be seen only at night, it's worth staying up to catch the show.

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Commission for Social Development Live Look

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A few things to know before watching the sky turn dark.

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NASA's year-long Twins Study compared identical twins - Scott and Mark Kelly - while Scott was in space and Mark was on Earth.

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In the Northern Hemisphere, the annual August Perseid meteor shower probably ranks as the all-time favorite meteor shower of the year. This major shower takes place during the lazy, hazy days of summer, when many families are on vacation. And what could be more luxurious than taking a siesta in the heat of the day and watching this summertime classic in the relative coolness of night?

No matter where you live worldwide, the 2018 Perseid meteor shower will probably produce the greatest number of meteors this coming weekend - on the mornings of August 11, 12 and 13. In a dark, moonless sky, this shower often produces 50 or more meteors per hour. And this year, in 2018, there will be no moonlight to ruin the show.
See it! Photos of 2017's Perseid meteor shower
When and how should I watch the Perseid meteor shower in 2018? The best showing will probably be during the predawn hours on August 12 and/or 13. Perseid numbers often reach 50 or more meteors per hour. Two years ago, in 2016, there was an outburst, with the rate doubling for some observers on Earth. We don't know of any outburst for 2018 - but, then, you really never know for sure unless you watch!

The Perseid meteor shower is known to rise to a peak gradually, over several weeks, and then fall off rapidly in the days following the shower. Will you see meteors on Tuesday morning, August 14? Possibly...

Also remember, the the Delta Aquarid meteor shower is still rambling along steadily. You'll see mostly Perseids but also a few Delta Aquarids in the mix.

No matter how many meteors you see, you might see something, and it might be a lot of fun.

In a typical year, although the meteor numbers increase after midnight, the Perseid meteors still start to fly at mid-to-late evening from northerly latitudes. South of the equator, the Perseids start to streak the sky around midnight.

Find a dark spot away from pesky artificial lights, and an open view of sky.

Don't rule out early evenings, either. As a general rule, the Perseid meteors tend to be few and far between at nightfall and early evening. Yet, if fortune smiles upon you, you could catch an earthgrazer - a looooong, slow, colorful meteor traveling horizontally across the evening sky. Earthgrazer meteors are rare but memorable. Perseid earthgrazers can only appear at early to mid-evening, when the radiant point of the shower is close to the horizon.

General rules for Perseid-watching. No special equipment, or knowledge of the constellations, needed.

Find a dark, open sky to enjoy the show. An open sky is essential because these meteors fly across the sky in many different directions and in front of numerous constellations.

Give yourself at least an hour of observing time, for these meteors in meteor showers come in spurts and are interspersed with lulls. Remember, your eyes can take as long as 20 minutes to adapt to the darkness of night. So don't rush the process.

Know that the meteors all come from a single point in the sky. If you trace the paths of the Perseid meteors backwards, you'd find they all come from a point in front of the constellation Perseus. Don't worry about which stars are Perseus. Just enjoying knowing and observing that they all come from one place on the sky's dome.

Enjoy the comfort of a reclining lawn chair. Bring along some other things you might enjoy also, like a thermos filled with a hot drink.

Remember ... all good things come to those who wait. Meteors are part of nature. There's no way to predict exactly how many you'll see on any given night. Find a good spot, watch, wait.

You'll see some.

What's the source of the Perseid meteor shower? Every year, from around July 17 to August 24, our planet Earth crosses the orbital path of Comet Swift-Tuttle, the parent of the Perseid meteor shower. Debris from this comet litters the comet's orbit, but we don't really get into the thick of the comet rubble until after the first week of August. The bits and pieces from Comet Swift-Tuttle slam into the Earth's upper atmosphere at some 130,000 miles (210,000 km) per hour, lighting up the nighttime with fast-moving Perseid meteors.

If our planet happens to pass through an unusually dense clump of meteoroids - comet rubble - we'll see an elevated number of meteors. We can always hope!

Comet Swift-Tuttle has a very eccentric - oblong - orbit that takes this comet outside the orbit of Pluto when farthest from the sun, and inside the Earth's orbit when closest to the sun. It orbits the sun in a period of about 133 years. Every time this comet passes through the inner solar system, the sun warms and softens up the ices in the comet, causing it to release fresh comet material into its orbital stream.

Comet Swift-Tuttle last reached perihelion - closest point to the sun - in December 1992 and will do so next in July 2126.

What is the radiant point for the Perseid meteor shower? If you trace all the Perseid meteors backward, they all seem to come from the constellation Perseus, near the famous Double Cluster. Hence, the meteor shower is named in the honor of the constellation Perseus the Hero.

However, this is a chance alignment of the meteor shower radiant with the constellation Perseus. The stars in Perseus are light-years distant while these meteors burn up about 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the Earth's surface. If any meteor survives its fiery plunge to hit the ground intact, the remaining portion is called a meteorite. Few - if any - meteors in meteor showers become meteorites, however, because of the flimsy nature of comet debris. Most meteorites are the remains of asteroids.

In ancient Greek star lore, Perseus is the son of the god Zeus and the mortal Danae. It is said that the Perseid shower commemorates the time when Zeus visited Danae, the mother of Perseus, in a shower of gold.

Bottom line: The 2018 Perseid meteor shower is expected to produce the most meteors in the predawn hours this weekend - on August 11, 12, and 13.
Everything you need to know: Delta Aquarid meteor shower

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colorful meteor traveling horizontally across the evening sky

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Moonless nights for Perseid meteors | EarthSky.org

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In the Northern Hemisphere, the annual August Perseid meteor shower probably ranks as the all-time favorite meteor shower of the year. This major shower takes place during the lazy, hazy days of summer, when many families are on vacation.

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NASA's historic Parker Solar Probe mission will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds. Parker Solar Probe will travel through the Sun's atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions-and ultimately providing humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star.

The Sun, at the heart of our solar system, is a yellow dwarf star, a hot ball of glowing gases. Its gravity holds the solar system together, keeping everything from the biggest planets to the smallest particles of debris in its orbit. Electric currents in the Sun generate a magnetic field that is carried out through the solar system by the solar wind-a stream of electrically charged gas blowing outward from the Sun in all directions.

The connection and interactions between the Sun and Earth drive the seasons, ocean currents, weather, climate, radiation belts and aurorae. Though it is special to us, there are billions of stars like our Sun scattered across the Milky Way galaxy. Explore the Sun ›

Ten Things to Know About the Sun

Pop Culture

Pop Culture

The Sun has inspired mythological stories in cultures around the world, including those of the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs of Mexico, Native American tribes of North and South America, the Chinese, and many others.

In more recent times, the Sun adorns everything from album covers, such as Sublime's iconic 1992 debut, to packages of raisins, while it influences stories in comics, theatrical films and everything in between.

If you're Superman (or a fellow Kryptonian), your powers are heightened by the yellow glow of our Sun, and you can even dispose of dangerous materials like Superboy once did, by hurling them into the Sun. And in the 2007 film Sunshine, the Sun is dying, leaving Earth in a state of deep freeze. To save humanity, a crewed spacecraft is on its way to reignite the Sun with a bomb, though things don't go quite as planned.

Resources

Science Mission Directorate: Heliophysics Missions

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NASA's historic Parker Solar Probe mission will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds. Parker Solar Probe will travel through the Sun's atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions-and ultimately providing humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star.

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Username: gsdenver
Password: brainpop

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Username: gsdenver
Password: brainpop

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Username: gsdenver
Password: brainpop

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BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology

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Username: gsdenver
Password: brainpop

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About ten years ago, two scientists had a little extra time on board NASA's low gravity aircraft and came up with the idea of popping water balloons. Mechanical engineers Seth Lichter, of Northwestern University, and Mark Weislogel, of Portland State University, use the floating water balls to explain some basic principles of physics.

Credits

Filmed by Jim Sims. Footage courtesy of NASA and Mark Weislogel. Music by SYNTHAR. Produced by Flora Lichtman

Meet the Producer

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Water Balloons in Space - Science Friday

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About ten years ago, two scientists had a little extra time on board NASA's low gravity aircraft and came up with the idea of popping water balloons. Mechanical engineers Seth Lichter, of Northwestern University, and Mark Weislogel, of Portland State University, use the floating water balls to explain some basic principles of physics.

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In 2011, comet Lovejoy traveled through the sun's corona and lived to tell the tale. But its tail was the most telling. Reporting in the journal , Cooper Downs, an astrophysicist at Predictive Science Inc. in San Diego, Calif., says that the wiggly path of the comet's tail helps explain the sun's magnetic field.

Meet the Producer

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Comet's Tail Shines Light on Sun - Science Friday

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In 2011, comet Lovejoy traveled through the sun's corona and lived to tell the tale. But its tail was the most telling. Reporting in the journal , Cooper Downs, an astrophysicist at Predictive Science Inc. in San Diego, Calif., says that the wiggly path of the comet's tail helps explain the sun's magnetic field.

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Materials

Humans have been observing comets for thousands of years. Though comets appear infrequently, when they do appear, they can be visible to the naked eye at night as a bright white star with a long, misty white tail trailing behind it.

On November 12th, 2014, the Philae lander successfully landed on comet 67P after a 10-year, 3-billion-mile voyage aboard spacecraft Rosetta. The event marks the first-ever landing of a space vehicle on a comet. Both Rosetta and Philae are loaded with scientific equipment for measuring the composition, gravity, appearance, and surface of the comet, opening a new chapter in our scientific understanding of comets and our early universe.

But what is a comet, anyway?

What do we know about their surface, appearance, size, tail, color, brightness, age, movement ... and even their smell? In each of the interviews below, scientists (some of whom were part of the Rosetta mission) describe various comet characteristics. As you listen to these interviews, take notes as the scientists describe what a comet is like. You can use this comet characteristics graphic organizer to help you write down these descriptions.

You will then incorporate your comet descriptions, literally, into your own text illustration of a comet. A text illustration uses actual descriptive text to form the shapes and objects in a drawing. This is a great way to quickly visualize all the information you've learned about comets.

How To Create a Text Illustration

Listen, Watch, Read About Comets

Educator's Toolbox

Meet the Writer

Ariel Zych is Science Friday's education director. She is a former teacher and scientist who spends her free time making food, watching arthropods, and being outside.

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What Exactly IS a Comet? - Science Friday

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Materials Humans have been observing comets for thousands of years. Though comets appear infrequently, when they do appear, they can be visible to the naked eye at night as a bright white star with a long, misty white tail trailing behind it.

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Physics of Baseball on Mars with Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains How Time Is Different on Mars

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Hubel and Wiesel won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Here's a video explaining their experiment.
Did you know that when you fall down, the earth falls up to meet you? Explore the counterintuitive equation that describes gravity.
Pioneer Centre of Research and Education in Biomedicine and Aerospace Biomedical Engineering.
The truth is that we'd be blobs of water and bone without our muscles. They are the things that hold us up and allow our skeleton to support our body weight. But how do they form and develop?
In the same way, our bones grow and develop. How, you ask? Find out here.
Are typical balance disorders the same as those that an astronaut experiences when he/she reenters the earth's gravity? "A balance disorder is a condition that makes you feel unsteady or dizzy, as if you are moving, spinning, or floating, even though you are standing still or lying down. Balance disorders can be caused by certain health conditions, medications, or a problem in the inner ear or the brain."
The inner has two functions; the first is hearing and the second is balance. It is a warren of tubes filled with fluid encased within the temporal bone of the skull. The bony tubes also contain a set of cell membrane lined tubes. The bony tubes are called the bony labyrinth filled with perilymph fluid, which the membranous labyrinth tubes are filed with endolymph. This is where the cells responsible for hearing are located (the hairy cells of Corti).
Living in space is not the same as living on Earth. Many things are different. Our bodies change in space. The way we stay clean and neat is different too. Learn how astronauts stay strong, clean and neat.
The Mars One Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation that will establish a permanent human settlement on Mars in 2023.

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Our bodies function necessarily under the presence of gravity; how blood pumps, a sense of balance and bone growth are all due to life in a world where gravity is an inescapable reality. Armed with experiments from neuroscientists David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, astronaut Jay Buckey presents a thought experiment: How would our bodies work without the force of gravity?

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Sports Demo Audio/Video Clips

What would it be like to play football or baseball in space? Flight engineer Clayton Anderson, crew member on the International Space Station's Expedition 15, shows you. Download video and audio clips of Anderson on the space station as he demonstrates and discusses these sports and others. You can mix these NASA clips and images with your own narration, original video, special effects and transitions. Preview the video and download the clips you want to use in your own multimedia project.
To download clips:

1. Click "Playlist" at the top of the video player to view and select from available videos.

2. In the list below the video player, right click (use CTRL + click for Macs) to download the video or the audio.

(Anderson) One of the things we have to talk about is Newton's laws. Anything in space -- if we leave it just where it is -- it will stay there unless it's acted upon by another force. So that football, theoretically, in zero g will stay there forever until somebody acts on it with a force. And now as that football goes, it will continue to move that direction until we stop it or give it a force in another direction. So think about that if you were the field goal kicker on your football team. Then you could do this: You could tee up the football, and all by yourself, you could kick that field goal right there. It's good!

(Anderson) Another sport we have is baseball. Now, baseball, a lot of people know -- when you're a pitcher -- is based on the curvature of the ball and how it spins. And if a pitcher puts different spins on the ball, it will move in different directions to fool the batter.But in space it's not quite the same. As you can see, this ball's spinning, but it's not doing anything. So a batter could come up with his baseball bat, and he could just smack it right out of the park.

Batter Up in Space
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Download Audio (Not Available)

(Anderson) So now as the batter, I've had time to go back to the dugout, grab my baseball bat, set up in the box and swing. Oh, it looks like it might be a foul ball, coming back to me. So, let's try that again. Looks like it's a fast ball right down the center of the plate. It's a line shot. Oh, it's out of here.

(Anderson) Some of you may know that a knuckle ball is a pitch that's thrown by a pitcher that doesn't spin at all. When it doesn't spin and it goes through the airstream, it causes it to move in all different sorts of direction. And that's because of the reaction of the forces in the air and this funny non-spin of the ball. But, see, today I can throw a knuckle ball, and it goes straight as an arrow. Look at that. Didn't move a bit.

(Anderson) As you know, in basketball we want to throw the ball through the hoop. And in order to do that on the ground, we need gravity because as we toss the ball into space, gravity will pull it back down through the hoop like that. But in space you can see it's a little bit of a different challenge. We have our basketball hoop in a different direction. If we put it up this way, which probably looks normal to most of you on the ground, it's a little bit hard to throw the ball through the hoop from out here. But we can try. See, the ball goes in a straight line and we want it to kind of arc down through the hoop. So we have to change our trajectory a little bit and see if we can bank-shot the ball into the hole. Oh, yeah, we got her.

Soccer Demo in Space
Download Video
Download Audio (Not Available)

(Anderson) As you can see, we can play lots of different sports on board. I'm not much of a soccer player, but you can even do soccer. You have to be careful as you shoot through the goal -- oh -- because sometimes it goes down in the hole and we have to wait for it to come back up.

(Anderson) We can also be a receiver in any sport on board the station. And if the football pass is good, we can score that touchdown. ... So, there you go, sports fans. Zero g is a sportsman's paradise. You just have to change the rules a little bit.

(Anderson) Another concept that we can illustrate in sports in zero g is the ease with which we can do some certain things. Take gymnastics, for example. Many of you may have watched young men in the Olympics, and they do a move called the iron cross on the rings, which is extremely difficult to do. But in space, it's pretty easy.

Notice the perfect form and the straight legs and the pointed toes.

Tumbling in Space
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Download Audio (Not Available)

(Anderson) For my next maneuver we're going to do a little tumbling. But for that I have to take my headset off.

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DIY Podcast: Sports Demo Audio/Video Clips

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What would it be like to play football or baseball in space? Flight engineer Clayton Anderson, crew member on the International Space Station's Expedition 15, shows you. Download video and audio clips of Anderson on the space station as he demonstrates and discusses these sports and others.

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How Curiosity got us to Mars - Bobak Ferdowsi

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In August 2012, the Curiosity rover landed on Mars. The landing itself was a huge achievement and required a lot of forethought and planning by a very smart team. In this TED Youth 2012 Talk, Bobak Ferdowsi, the mohawked member of that team, outlines various aspects of a Mars landing, including the Seven Minutes of Terror.

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Reasons for the seasons - Rebecca Kaplan

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Why do some regions experience full-time heat while others are reckoning with frigid temperatures and snow? And why are the seasons reversed in the two hemispheres? Rebecca Kaplan explains how the shape of the Earth's orbit around the Sun and the Earth's tilt on its axis affect the amount of sunlight each region receives.

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Hubel and Wiesel won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Here's a video explaining their experiment.
Did you know that when you fall down, the earth falls up to meet you? Explore the counterintuitive equation that describes gravity.
Pioneer Centre of Research and Education in Biomedicine and Aerospace Biomedical Engineering.
The truth is that we'd be blobs of water and bone without our muscles. They are the things that hold us up and allow our skeleton to support our body weight. But how do they form and develop?
In the same way, our bones grow and develop. How, you ask? Find out here.
Are typical balance disorders the same as those that an astronaut experiences when he/she reenters the earth's gravity? "A balance disorder is a condition that makes you feel unsteady or dizzy, as if you are moving, spinning, or floating, even though you are standing still or lying down. Balance disorders can be caused by certain health conditions, medications, or a problem in the inner ear or the brain."
The inner has two functions; the first is hearing and the second is balance. It is a warren of tubes filled with fluid encased within the temporal bone of the skull. The bony tubes also contain a set of cell membrane lined tubes. The bony tubes are called the bony labyrinth filled with perilymph fluid, which the membranous labyrinth tubes are filed with endolymph. This is where the cells responsible for hearing are located (the hairy cells of Corti).
Living in space is not the same as living on Earth. Many things are different. Our bodies change in space. The way we stay clean and neat is different too. Learn how astronauts stay strong, clean and neat.
The Mars One Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation that will establish a permanent human settlement on Mars in 2023.

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Our bodies function necessarily under the presence of gravity; how blood pumps, a sense of balance and bone growth are all due to life in a world where gravity is an inescapable reality. Armed with experiments from neuroscientists David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, astronaut Jay Buckey presents a thought experiment: How would our bodies work without the force of gravity?

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Four ways to understand the Earth's age - Joshua M. Sneideman

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The Earth is 4.6 billion years old -- but how can humans relate to a number so colossal, and where do we fit on the geologic timeline? Comparing the Earth's lifetime to one calendar year, events like the extinction of dinosaurs and Columbus setting sail took place relatively recently. Joshua M.

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The moon illusion - Andrew Vanden Heuvel

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Have you noticed how the full moon looks bigger on the horizon than high overhead? Actually, the two images are exactly the same size -- so why do we perceive them differently? Scientists aren't sure, but there are plenty of intriguing theories.

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How fast are you moving right now? - Tucker Hiatt

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"How fast are you moving?" seems like an easy question, but it's actually quite complicated -- and perhaps best answered by another question: "Relative to what?" Even when you think you're standing still, the Earth is moving relative to the Sun, which is moving relative to the Milky Way, which is...you get the idea.

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Watch the other parts when finished

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The fundamentals of space-time: Part 1 - Andrew Pontzen and Tom Whyntie

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Space is where things happen. Time is when things happen. And sometimes, in order to really look at the universe, you need to take those two concepts and mash them together.

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Michael Stevens of Vsauce looks at what would happen if the Earth stopped spinning. He also explores how we construct time as a function of the Earth's rotation and why atomic clocks are so precise.

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Near Earth objects are objects in space with the potential of hitting Earth. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a great resource about asteroids. The site features an overview, current missions exploring asteroids and tracking near earth objects.

The Killer Asteroids Project has a number of really cool tools to help us learn about asteroids and their impact on the Earth, including a tool to see the effects of an asteroid hitting where you live. The site also has a game comparing the risk of being killed by asteroid to other health risks.

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Near Earth objects are objects in space with the potential of hitting Earth. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a great resource about asteroids. The site features an overview, current missions exploring asteroids and tracking near earth objects.

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There's a lot of talk these days about when and how we might all move to Mars. But what would it actually be like to live there? Mari Foroutan details the features of Mars that are remarkably similar to those of Earth - and those that can only be found on the red planet.

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The incredible collaboration behind the International Space Station - Tien Nguyen

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The International Space Station is roughly the size of a six-bedroom house and weighs more than 320 cars -- it's so large that no single rocket could have lifted it into orbit. Instead, it was assembled piece by piece while hurtling through space at 28,000 kilometers per hour, lapping the Earth once every 90 minutes.

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The Sun's surprising movement across the sky - Gordon Williamson

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Suppose you placed a camera at a fixed position, took a picture of the sky at the same time every day for an entire year, and overlaid all of the photos on top of each other. What would the sun look like in that combined image? A stationary dot?

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NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth yesterday, March 1, 2016, from a record breaking 340 days aboard the International Space Station. Whoa! Ever wonder what happens to someone's body when they are in space? Listen on and find out!

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What's the difference between a meteor, meteorite, and meteoroid ... and exactly how scared should we be? Crash Course explains exactly what happens when earth encounters debris as it plows its course around the sun.

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Can we send people to farther planets?

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Could we survive prolonged space travel? - Lisa Nip

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Prolonged space travel plays a severe toll on the human body: microgravity impairs muscle and bone growth, and high doses of radiation cause irreversible mutations. As we seriously consider the human species becoming space-faring, a big question stands: even if we do break free from Earth's orbit, can we adapt to the extreme environments of space?

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Learn how to make a sundial by using our simple template, some tape, and a pencil! You can easily make a sundial good enough to keep track of the daytime hours.
Learning how to make a sundial provides you with an amazingly simple yet effective devices. They range from sticks planted in the ground to precision-machined marvels costing thousands of dollars. The DIY sundial design shown here can be constructed in minutes from materials lying around your house, but it's surprisingly accurate. Perfect for beginner astronomers to get started, a sundial makes a great introduction to learning about the wonders of our universe - and they're pretty cool!

Supplies for Sundial Making

You're just 15 minutes away from having a working DIY sundial! Here's what you need to create it:

How to Make A Sundial

Cut and fold the printout according to directions printed on it. (You might want two copies so that you can work with one while reading the directions on the other.) The only hard part is pushing the pencil point through the center of the small circle. It helps to twirl the pencil as you push.
1. Step 2: When you're done, the pencil should be perpendicular to the sundial's face (not to the base). If the pencil wants to topple over, try taping the whole thing to another piece of paper or (better) to a sheet of cardboard. Mounting the sundial on cardboard also makes it easier to carry around. Cereal boxes are a great source of free cardboard.

2. Step 3: Now turn the sundial so that the pencil points due north (or due south if you live in the Southern Hemisphere). You can use a compass or a map to determine the proper direction, or you can just orient the sundial so that it agrees with your local time. (Don't forget to subtract one hour from clock time if you're on daylight-saving time.)

3. That's it! Now you can watch the shadow on the sundial change as the Sun moves from east to west over the course of the day.

How Equatorial Sundials Work

You've probably seen lots of horizontal sundials, which have a readout face parallel to the ground. It's the design that's often found in garden stores. They're easy to use - but tricky to design and build.

This design for learning how to make a sundial is called an equatorial sundial because the face with the numbers is parallel to Earth's equator. Conceptually, it's the simplest design.

However, it suffers from one practical disadvantage: Depending on the season, the pencil's shadow might fall either on the top or the bottom of the readout face. (It's easiest to use at midwinter and midsummer, and hardest near the equinoxes around March 20th and September 23rd.) Fortunately, because the face is made of translucent paper, it's easy to see the shadow even when it's on the underside. (Reading off the solar time would be extremely awkward if the face were made of metal!)

To see how this sundial works, imagine first that you lived at the North Pole or South Pole. In that case, a stick planted upright in the ground would form both a horizontal and an equatorial sundial - the two designs being identical at those locations.

During spring and summer at the pole, the Sun would rotate a full 360° around you every day, staying the same height above the horizon all the time. The stick's shadow would behave exactly like the hour hand on a 24-hour clock, staying the same length all day long while rotating at a constant rate. During autumn and winter, the Sun would never rise, and your sundial would be useless - but you'd be too cold to care!

The pencil in the sundial you've just built is parallel to that stick at the Pole, and the readout face is parallel to the ground there. So the pencil's shadow behaves exactly like the shadow of the stick at the Pole-except that your sundial's shadow is visible even in the winter. That's because unlike our planet, the sundial is hollow, allowing the Sun to shine up from below.

Building a Better Sundial

Do you find that your sundial isn't as accurate as you would like? This might be partly due to construction problems. Paper isn't very rigid, and no matter how carefully you do the folds, the sundial won't hold its shape perfectly. But there are also some more fundamental reasons why sundials and clocks tell different time. For more information, see our article Time and the Amateur Astronomer.

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How to Make a Sundial the Simple Way | Sky & Telescope

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Learn how to make a sundial by using our simple template, some tape, and a pencil! You can easily make a sundial good enough to keep track of the daytime hours. Learning how to make a sundial provides you with an amazingly simple yet effective devices.

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SkyTellers - Meteors - Space Rocks! A Meteorite Game

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Each player, other than the Cosmic Questioner, will begin as a "Meteoroid" in the "Start" square and will roll the die and move their gamepiece the appropriate number of spaces. They are to follow the directions on the initial square on which they land.