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KS3 · 15 minutes · no login

Sun and Earth

All teacher notes · Open the lab · 2112 words · ·

Field photograph or official scientific figure for teaching sun earth. A second photograph for the projector script — not the lab cover. Source: Wikimedia Commons / NASA / USGS / NOAA, public domain or CC.Wikimedia Commons / NASA / USGS / NOAA, public domain or CC

Why this lesson, and why the 3D

Sun and Earth is a fifteen-minute projector lesson, not a homework packet and not a film with a quiz bolted on. Put this hook on the board before you dim the lights: The solar constant is a number. Latitude is why a playground in London and one in Nairobi disagree. By the end of the slot a pupil should be able to link solar constant, insolation by latitude, and sunspots as a school-level activity toggle — not astrology. Curriculum tags in the header (KS3; NGSS MS-ESS1-1; APES 4.7) are filters, not a flag. The room is worldwide; SI first; International English. Ages on the card (KS3, GCSE, NGSS MS, APES) are a suggested band, not a gate.

A playground in London and one in Nairobi disagree at noon. Same star. Same solar constant at the top of the atmosphere. Different incidence. Miami in December still takes a high beam; Leeds does not. That is this lab plus tilt, not a farther Sun in kilometres that matter. UK glasshouses plot hours above a useful angle. Florida growers plot the same number with a different latitude. Snowdonia fieldwork in June is long light on a steep slope. Holderness in December is a low, weak punch on wet till. The skill is to separate the constant from the geometry. If you mix them, you will blame sunspots for winter, or blame distance for the poles. Neither is the story. The beam is the story. The bars by latitude are the story. Seasons are a tilt lab. This one is the punch the tilt then aims.

The 3D is a named, inspectable object. Click the part, not a caption. If the model will not spin, the Why panel still carries the mechanism, the two photographs, and the film. Do not apologise for the model. Drive it. A silent spin teaches a screensaver. A named mesh that changes under a slider teaches the process.

Fifteen minutes on the projector

Point at the bars of insolation by latitude. Equator high, poles low. That is incidence, not a farther Sun in kilometres that matter. The solar constant is about 1366 W m⁻² at the top of the atmosphere, a school figure. Surface flux is less: atmosphere and angle both take a cut. Toggle Sunspots on. They are cooler, magnetically active patches. They do not run the seasons. Say that out loud. Toggle them off again so the bars stay the story. A playground in London and one in Nairobi disagree because of latitude, not sunspots. Seasons are a tilt lab. This lab is the beam. Finish in Check.

Open the lab full screen (F). Labels on (L). Speak the first step before you touch a slider: Beam hits a globe. Bars of insolation by latitude. Then the second: Toggle sunspots — a magnetic blemish, not a weather spell. Then the third: Same solar constant; different incidence.

The sliders that earn their keep are Sunspots. Space plays; arrows nudge time; R resets. Parameters the URL can remember: spots. If you only have eight minutes, skip the last step and finish in Check. Projector layout (P) is for the back row: one idea, large type, the model still live.

There is no year slider in the bar. Space still turns the globe. Arrows nudge it. Toggle Sunspots on, then off, so the class hears they are not the season. L labels. R reset. P projector. No explode, no slice. Point at the bars: equator, 55°N playground, pole. Pause. Ask which bar is London in December before you name it. The beam is the plot. The toggle is a warning label. Leave spots off when you want the bars to stay the story.

The in-site film is “How Does the Earth Move? Crash Course Geography #5” (Crash Course Geography, about 11 min, Crash Course / Complexly on YouTube. Standard YouTube licence. Educational embed, autoplay off.). Autoplay is off. Play one minute if you need a second voice; do not let the film eat the slot. The 3D still has to move under your hand.

What the third row will get wrong

You will hear the misconception before you have finished the first sentence. Write the false claim on the board and leave it there until the model has contradicted it. Do not skip this. A fluent pupil can recite the hook and still believe the false sentence.

“Sunspots cause seasons.” — no. Tilt causes seasons. Sunspots are a small, separate story.

“The poles are cold because they are farther from the Sun in kilometres that matter.” — no. The extra distance is tiny next to 1 AU. The beam is oblique. That is the cut.

“The solar constant is what hits a London playground.” — no. The constant is top of atmosphere. Surface flux is less: air and angle both take a share.

Pitfalls to keep in your pocket: Sunspot scare stories as weather or seasons. Saying the poles are farther from the Sun in kilometres that matter. Treating 1366 W m⁻² as playground flux. Do not let a pupil leave thinking the 3D is a photograph. It is a teaching model. Where vertical exaggeration exists, T collapses it and the caption says so. A labelled lie of scale is honest. An unlabelled one is a cartoon.

Two places, not a slogan

Input is the solar beam. The school figure is about 1366 W m⁻² at 1 AU, top of atmosphere. That number does not change with latitude. What changes is incidence: how oblique the beam is when it meets a patch of ground. Equator bars stand tall. Polar bars sit low, and in winter they vanish. What moves: the globe’s face, the height of the bars, the season’s aiming if you let time walk. What does not: the solar constant as a top-of-atmosphere number, the fact of a beam, the order of the latitudes. What is conserved: energy in the beam before atmosphere and angle take a cut. Surface flux is less. Always. Sunspots are cooler, magnetically active patches on the photosphere. Toggle them. They do not run the seasons. They do not dim a London playground in any way this lab will let you claim. The lie the model tells: the Sun is a nearby ball, Earth is huge beside it, bars are lollipops stuck on a globe. The constant is true-ish. The geometry of incidence is the lesson. Astrology is not invited. Distance to the poles is not the mechanism.

The first place to land is UK day length. The second is Florida insolation. Same process, different rock or climate. If a pupil can only name one place, they have a postcard, not a mechanism. Atlas entries for those names are a click from the case list; send them back to the lab with one sentence they can say in Check.

Do not flatten the comparison into “this country versus that country.” Name the landform. Holderness is till, not chalk. Hawaii is a hotspot, not an island arc. Yosemite is a glacial trough, not a river canyon. The 3D is allowed to be schematic; the place names are not allowed to be sloppy.

Figures and the film

Field photograph: The Sun as a disk; Earth is a speck at true scale. Distance is almost constant; tilt is not. Credit: NASA SDO, public domain.

Mechanism photograph: Field photograph or official scientific figure for teaching sun earth. Field photograph or official scientific figure for teaching sun earth. A second photograph for the projector script — not the lab cover. Source: Wikimedia Commons / NASA / USGS / NOAA, public domain or CC. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / NASA / USGS / NOAA, public domain or CC.

Two photographs, two jobs. The field picture is the place. The mechanism picture is the process. Do not run the lesson on a single Apollo Earth disc. A carbon-cycle class is a forest and a seam, not a blue marble. An ENSO class is a Pacific temperature map, not Africa from Apollo 17.

Words they must be able to say

Say these out loud once while you click the matching mesh. If a word has no mesh, it still has a photograph in Terms.

Solar constant: Solar flux at 1 AU, top of atmosphere. School figure ~1366 W m⁻². Not the flux on a playground. Exam language also accepts “Total solar irradiance (school figure)”. Insolation: Incoming solar radiation at a surface. Incidence and atmosphere both cut it. Exam language also accepts “Incoming solar radiation”. Incidence: How steeply the beam meets the ground. Oblique at high latitude. Overhead only between the tropics, and not every day. Sunspot: A cooler, magnetically active patch on the photosphere. A school toggle. Not the cause of seasons. Top of atmosphere: Where the solar constant is defined. Below that, air and angle take a cut. Exam language also accepts “TOA”. Latitude: Angle from the equator. It sets how oblique the noon beam is, before tilt aims the season. Photosphere: The Sun’s visible surface. Spots live here. It is not a hole, and it is not weather.

Exam-language toggle (the Teacher tab) swaps UK/US pairs where they exist — levée/levee, arête/arete — so a mixed room is not punished for spelling.

Close the slot

If the globe will not spin, keep the sentences. Solar constant: about 1366 W m⁻² at the top of the atmosphere, a school figure. Surface gets less. Poles are cold mainly because the beam is oblique, not because the Sun is farther in kilometres that matter. A London playground and a Nairobi playground disagree by latitude. Sunspots are magnetic blemishes, not winter. Seasons are tilt. This lab is the beam. That is enough for Check on paper, and enough to kill a sunspot scare story in one line.

Finish in Check — ten questions, not a mood. The bank mixes definition, process, the misconception you just killed, a named place, and a read-the-model item (click the part; T). If a pupil can only recite the hook, they have not used the geometry. Wrong answers still show the one-line explain. Do not skip the explain.

Sources on the Teacher tab are the trail, not a bibliography to copy. NASA / NOAA solar.

Link back to the live lab and keep the same slug. Do not invent a parallel worksheet that contradicts T, SI, or the named parts.

This note is worldwide. Curriculum tags (KS3; NGSS MS-ESS1-1; APES 4.7) are filters, not a flag. A class in Nairobi, London, or Shanghai can use the same 3D. Ages (KS3, GCSE, NGSS MS, APES) are a suggested band. If a sentence only works in one exam board, rewrite it before you project it.

Write these three lines on the board before you dim the lights. One: The solar constant is a number. Latitude is why a playground in London and one in Nairobi disagree. Two: the misconception “Sunspots cause seasons.”. Three: the named parts they must click. Then drive the model. Check is ten questions covering definition, process, the misconception, a place, and a read-the-model item. Do not skip the explain on a wrong answer.

Board, units, and what not to say

SI first. Metres, kilometres, degrees Celsius, metres per second. A conversion in brackets is courtesy, not a second system. Do not let a pupil leave thinking the 3D is a photograph. It is a teaching model. Where vertical exaggeration exists, T collapses it and the caption says so.

Do not say “teaching mesh”, “sprinkle”, or “thin free surface not a fat pipe” out loud. Say the landform. Seasons are ~23.44° of axial tilt, not Earth–Sun distance. The outer core is liquid; S-waves do not pass. Yosemite is a glacial U-trough. San Andreas is a transform. Hawaiʻi and Yellowstone are hotspots. Florida is not a glacial trough.

If the room is noisy, projector layout (P) is the back-row setting: one idea, large type, the model still live. Full screen (F). Labels (L). Space plays. Arrows nudge time. R resets. The URL can remember spots. Send them home with the same link; there is no login.

In-site film

How Does the Earth Move? Crash Course Geography #5. Crash Course Geography. Crash Course / Complexly on YouTube. Standard YouTube licence. Educational embed, autoplay off. Autoplay off.