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We present the development and validation of a new assessment tool, the Moon Phases Concept Inventory for Middle School (MPCI-MS), a concept inventory about the phases of the moon targeting students aged 10 to 14 years old. Items in the questionnaire are based on a careful examination of the concept domain of phases of the moon, ideas and concepts necessary to understand the mechanism of lunar phases, as chosen by a panel of seven professional astronomers. Questions and multiple-choice answers were tested for readability with 5th grade students, tested for reading level, and submitted to a second panel of professional astronomers to check for face and construct validity of the items. The MPCI-MS was tested with N = 296 students from grade 5 in elementary school to secondary 2 (M[subscript age] = 10.2 to 14.1). One item about global perspective on lunar phases had to be removed because of poor psychometric properties. The revised MPCI-MS has a post-test Cronbach alpha score of 0.786 and good overall psychometric properties: the mean difficulty index for the MPCI-MS pretest is 0.47, and 0.61 for the post-test; mean point-biserial correlation (post-test) is 0.376. Test-retest without instruction at one-week interval showed high test-retest reliability [M[subscript pre] = 13.696, M[subscript post] = 14.523; t(45) = 1.315, p = 0.192]. We conclude that the MPCI-MS is a reliable and valid instrument that can discriminate between novices and experts, and can be used to assess 10 to 14 year-old students' learning gains on the topic of lunar phases. The final version of MPCI-MS is a 19-item instrument, including two new questions about eclipses, that takes between 15 and 25 min for students to complete.

This article describes a unit in which students investigate total solar eclipses, such as the one coming August 21, from several perspectives. It incorporates mathematical thinking and aligns with the "Next Generation Science Standard." This article refers to physical, virtual, and mathematical modeling. Various models and perspectives are used to help students visualize the solar eclipse.

This study documented the means by which STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) educators experienced the mathematics and science associated with understanding lunar phenomena. The article reports how well STEM education graduate students interacted with projectbased materials as they engaged in interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Research questions pursued were: (a) How will students' spatial mathematics and scientific understandings develop as they engage in a contextualized, technology-rich, project-based environment? and (b) How will the students' group projects affect their understanding of lunar related concepts? A mixedmethods approach was used with this semester-long design study to expose how focused project work facilitated spatial understanding. Significant gains were made on lunar-related concepts that had been previously resistant to conceptual change (lunar motion and effect of lunar phase with location change). An implication of this study suggests that technologies (i.e., Stellarium, online blogging with Australia, and Geometer's Sketchpad) facilitated students' project progress, aided students' understanding of how perspective matters in terms of Earthly sky viewing, and deepened students' understanding on domains that included spatial reasoning.

Students' difficulties with accurately conceptualizing the relationships among the Earth, Moon, and Sun are well documented. Any teacher who has seen the film "A Private Universe" (Schneps and Sadler 1988) will remember the challenge the interviewees experienced when trying to explain their understanding of this phenomenon. This paper describes a strategy to help students develop a model of the Earth/Moon relationship that is correct both in terms of the scale sizes and the distances between them and extends previous work present in "Science Scope" (see Wallace, Dickerson, and Hopkins 2007: Riddle 2006a). (Contains 4 figures.)

Educators can connect their students internationally in meaningful activities that address multiple teaching standards that are of concern to educators, parents, and the public worldwide. In this article, the authors describe a project wherein Australian Year 7 students made an "Edible Lunar Vehicle" (ELV) together with U.S. college students. The project focused on several key 6-8 benchmarks that are outlined in "Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology (STL)." A table outlining the standards and benchmarks, and how each was addressed during this project is presented. (Contains 1 table.)

An important goal of the current reform movement in science education is to promote scientific literacy in the United States, and scientific inquiry is at its heart. However, the National Science Education Standards clearly indicate that to promote inquiry, more emphasis should be placed on "science as argument and explanation" rather than on science as "explanation and argument." They also call for scientific argumentation to play a more central role in the teaching and learning of science (NRC 1996). To that end, this article describes a multiple-day, inquiry-based lesson about the phases of the Moon that engages students in scientific research and argumentation. (Contains 6 figures.)

Using a science lesson on lunar phases as a basis for discussion, the author suggests ways that teachers can provide literacy instruction on multimodal texts in science. The author asserts that multiple representations are central to the discipline of science, and that students require explicit instruction on how to critically read, evaluate, and design a variety of scientific representations of their own. As students learn to read and write multimodal texts in science and other content areas, they will not only understand each discipline more fully, but also they may be better prepared to read and design multimodal texts in today's digital age in which multiple representations are omnipresent in various communicative mediums. (Contains 1 table.)

In conjunction with the August 8, 2007 launch of STS-118, the International Technology Education Association (ITEA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) developed and recently debuted curricular units for Grades K-12 on Space Exploration, known as STS-118 Design Challenges. The units focus on aspects of the themes that NASA Engineers and Scientists--as well as future generations of explorers--must consider, such as Energy and Power, Transportation, and Lunar Plant Growth Chambers. These challenges are available for elementary, middle, and high school and revolve around a lunar plant growth chamber to help supplement the diet of astronauts while living and working on the moon, as well as provide as sense of "home." The Design Challenges include lessons, student and teacher resources, assessments, and materials lists. Moreover, the units integrate with the ITEA model program for technological literacy known as Engineering byDesign[TM]. Any motivated science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) teacher or team of teachers can implement this design challenge in the classroom. This article provides an in-depth description of the recently released STS-118 Design Challenges and presents specific suggestions for teacher preparation for this design challenge, as well as some general suggestions organized by (but not limited to) grade band.

This spring, as the school year starts to wind down, there will be many opportunities for students to observe bright planets and to wrap up the year with some great conjunctions and close occultation with the Moon, planets, bright stars, and star clusters). These observations can be coordinated with student observations of the Moon's phase cycle as the Moon waxes and wanes over the next couple of months. This month's column contains resources to help your students "scope out the skies" through the process of scientific inquiry. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table and 5 online resources.)

Most people have probably heard the tale about the Moon being made out of Swiss cheese because, on Earth, the Moon looks like it is full of holes. Those holes are actually impact craters, circular depressions that formed when objects, such as rocks that orbit the Sun, smashed into the surface of the Moon. The activity described in this article, provides students, with the opportunity to investigate how those craters formed.

The results of a lunar massdriver mission and system analysis are discussed and show a strong case for a permanent lunar settlement with a site near the lunar equator. A modular massdriver concept is introduced, which uses multiple acceleration modules to be able to launch large masses into a trajectory that is able to reach Earth. An orbital mechanics analysis concludes that the launch site will be in the Oceanus Procellarum a flat, Titanium rich lunar mare area. It is further shown that the bulk of massdriver components can be manufactured by collecting lunar minerals, which are broken down into its constituting elements. The mass to orbit transfer rates of massdriver case study are significant and can vary between 1.8 kt and 3.3 megatons per year depending on the available power. Thus a lunar massdriver would act as a catalyst for any space based activities and a game changer for the scale of feasible space projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper it is intended to discuss an approach to reduce design costs for subsequent missions by introducing modularity, commonality and multi-mission capability and thereby reuse of mission individual investments into the design of lunar exploration infrastructural systems. The presented approach has been developed within the German Helmholtz-Alliance on Robotic Exploration of Extreme Environments (ROBEX), a research alliance bringing together deep-sea and space research to jointly develop technologies and investigate problems for the exploration of highly inaccessible terrain – be it in the deep sea and polar regions or on the Moon and other planets. Although overall costs are much smaller for deep sea missions as compared to lunar missions, a lot can be learned from modularity approaches in deep sea research infrastructure design, which allows a high operational flexibility in the planning phase of a mission as well as during its implementation. The research presented here is based on a review of existing modular solutions in Earth orbiting satellites as well as science and exploration systems. This is followed by an investigation of lunar exploration scenarios from which we derive requirements for a multi-mission modular architecture. After analyzing possible options, an approach using a bus modular architecture for dedicated subsystems is presented. The approach is based on exchangeable modules e.g. incorporating instruments, which are added to the baseline system platform according to the demands of the specific scenario. It will be described in more detail, including arising problems e.g. in the power or thermal domain. Finally, technological building blocks to put the architecture into practical use will be described more in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study to analyse morphometric, morphologic and spectral properties of lunar dome Sc 1. Topics discussed include close relation in structures of moon Sinus Aestuum and volcano Sc 1; formation of heterogeneous structure of dome due to composition of three surface types including mare-like, Cayley Plains and Fra Mauro; and presence of the Dome Units on its surface indicating pyroclasitc activity.