English is fun : 2022

Sunday 23 October 2022

Sun and Energy

A star is a hot, glowing ball of gas. When you look up in the night sky, you can see countless twinkling stars. Can you see any stars during the daytime? Of course! The light of daytime comes from our closest star: the Sun.

All 3D models in the page have loaded

Explore the Sun! Click and drag to rotate the Sun. Scroll or pinch to zoom in and out. Credit: NASA Visualization Technology Applications and Development (VTAD)

Just how close is the Sun to Earth? Way, way closer than other stars, but still pretty far away. It’s approximately 93 million miles away from Earth. That’s 400 times farther than the distance between Earth and the Moon!

However, it’s a good thing that Earth isn’t too close to the Sun. If we were too close, it would be way too hot to live here. The Sun’s surface is very hot, and its atmosphere is even hotter. And the Sun’s core is the hottest part of all, at a sizzling 27 million degrees Fahrenheit!

Our Sun is about 100 times wider than Earth, but it is just an average sized star. Astronomers have found some stars that are 100 times bigger than the Sun and others that are 10 times smaller.

Cartoon of the Sun looking upset and saying Hey! Who are you calling average?

The Sun is also right in the middle of its lifecycle. Right now, our Sun is in a stage called yellow dwarf. It is about 4.5 billion years old. In another 5 billion years the Sun will become a big, cool star called a red giant. A few billion years after that, it will become a small white dwarf star. It will shrink to around the same size as Earth, but it will weigh 20,000 times more.

Click the above image to expand it. Our Sun is in the middle of its lifecycle. It is a yellow dwarf star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

But even though our Sun is kind of an ordinary star, there are also a few things that make our Sun quite special. For example…

We can’t live without the Sun!

Life on Earth depends on the Sun. Here are just a few reasons why:

The Sun’s gravity holds our entire solar system together. Our solar system is even named after the Sun (the Latin word for Sun is “sol”).
Heat from the Sun makes Earth warm enough to live on.
Without light from the Sun, there would be no plants or animals—and, therefore, no food and we wouldn’t exist.

Cartoon of the Sun looking happy and the Earth saying thank you!

Heat and light might be important for life on Earth, but the Sun sends other stuff, too. The Sun sends lots of other energy and small particles toward Earth. Earth’s protective magnetic field and atmosphere shields us from most of the energy and particles. But sometimes a big stream of these particles reaches Earth and interacts with the gases at the outer edge of our atmosphere. This causes streams of light in the sky, called auroras.

Where does the Sun's energy come from?

The Sun's heat influences the environments of all the planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, and comets in our solar system. How does a big ball of hydrogen create all that heat? Learn all about it in this video!

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/menu/play/

(taken from:https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/all-about-the-sun/en/)

Saturday 8 October 2022

Maps and universe-Space-STEM

What is the universe?

The universe is everything. It includes all of space, and all the matter and energy that space contains. It even includes time itself and, of course, it includes you.

Earth and the Moon are part of the universe, as are the other planets and their many dozens of moons. Along with asteroids and comets, the planets orbit the Sun. The Sun is one among hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and most of those stars have their own planets, known as exoplanets.

The Milky Way is but one of billions of galaxies in the observable universe — all of them, including our own, are thought to have supermassive black holes at their centers. All the stars in all the galaxies and all the other stuff that astronomers can’t even observe are all part of the universe. It is, simply, everything.

Earth is a planet, and it’s in space and part of the universe just like the other planets. It just so happens that things live here and the environment near the surface of this particular planet is hospitable for life as we know it. Earth is a tiny, fragile exception in the cosmos. For humans and the other things living on our planet, practically the entire cosmos is a hostile and merciless environment.

This true-color image shows North and South America as they would appear from space 22,000 miles (35,000 km) above the Earth. The image is a combination of data from two satellites

How old is Earth?

Our planet, Earth, is an oasis not only in space, but in time. It may feel permanent. For nearly two-thirds of the time since the universe began, Earth did not even exist. Nor will it last forever in its current state.

By studying the radioactive decay of isotopes on Earth and in asteroids, scientists have learned that our planet and the solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago. The universe, on the other hand, appears to be about 13.8 billion years old.

Only a few hundred years ago, when people began systematically investigating the nature of things, the word “scientist” didn’t even exist (researchers were instead called “natural philosophers” for a time). Since then, our knowledge of the universe has repeatedly leapt forward. It was only about a century ago that astronomers first observed galaxies beyond our own, and only a half-century has passed since humans first began sending spacecraft to other worlds.

In the early 21st century alone, astronomers discovered thousands of planets around other stars, detected gravitational waves for the first time and produced the first image of a black hole.

The universe has existed roughly 56,000 times longer than our species has.

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/historic-timeline/#spitzer-space-telescope-launched

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/2291/comparison-of-planet-sizes-solar-systems/

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/965

https://www.adventuresci.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/2022-10-star-chart.pdf https://www.adventuresci.org/starcharts/

https://youtu.be/_O7JAdra26I

https://www.liveworksheets.com/worksheets/en/English_as_a_Second_Language_(ESL)/The_Solar_System/Planets_op1365097hi

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Sets/Paxi_animations/(result_type)/videos

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/menu/science-and-technology/

You get to decide how to make your satellite—its all up to you. While you are building your satellite, though, keep in mind that your satellite must have a couple of basic things:

diagram of the basic components of a satelllite.

Click on the image to see what a real satellite looks like!

	Container: Your satellite needs some sort of container to hold all of the gizmos together and keep its instruments safe.
	Power Source: You will need something to give your satellite electricity so that it can run all of its high-tech gizmos. Solar panels or fancy batteries are two options.
	Scientific Instruments: This is the why you launched your satellite in the first place! Instruments can take pictures of far away galaxies or planets right here in our Solar System, measure chemicals in Earth's atmosphere, or keep a close eye on our Sun's activity. It's your decision!
	Communication Device: You will need some way to communicate with Earth. Antennas (shaped like dishes or poles and rods) are a good way to do this.
	Orientation Finder: Make sure you have something that lets your satellite know where it's pointed and which way is 'up.' Something that looks at the stars (a star tracker) or the sun (a sun tracker) would work.

Here's Some Examples...

a model satellite built with described supplies.

Non-Edible Satellite 1

Container: small juice box.
Power source: battery made from a yellow sponge.
Instruments: small plastic dish attached with a pick-up stick.
Communication: Radio dish made with half a styrofoam ball, black construction paper, and a part of a pick-up stick.
Orientation finder: star tracker made from a screw.
Held together with: Scotch tape.

Sunday 2 October 2022

Natural disasters

How much do you know about natural disasters?

Are there any natural disasters that your country has experienced?

Have you ever been a witness in any disaster?

Could you describe it? How did you feel?

What do you believe the people should do to avoid these disasters?

Do you know what to do in a case of a disaster?

Tilly Smith, the girl who remembered a lesson that saved 100 lives

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58130705

AUGUST 2021-GREECE

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58152324

ZOOM EARTH: fore in real time

"From space we can view the Earth as a whole system, observe the net results of complex interactions, and begin to understand how the planet is changing in response to natural and human influences."

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8c59c6688e6441da8e42cf3f178d9d89

NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY

https://www.factmonster.com/games/hangman/natural-disasters

If there's a chance a tsunami is on its way, you don't want to be near the coast. So how can we tell if a tsunami is coming? We use satellites!

The MISR instrument on the Terra satellite takes pictures from different angles to look for tsunamis. Credit: NASA/JPL/Shigeru Suzuki and Eric M. De Jong, Solar System Visualization Project

MISR (the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer) is a NASA tool that watches for tsunamis from space. It has nine cameras, all pointed in slightly different directions. As the satellite passes overhead, it takes nine pictures of the same spot from different angles.

MISR can see sunlight reflecting off ripples and waves. Satellites that look straight down cannot see these ripples.

This series of MISR pictures was taken over six minutes on December 26, 2004. It shows tsunami waves breaking on the southeast coastline of India. Credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team

These images help scientists understand how tsunamis work. The more we learn about tsunamis, the better we can predict where, when and how strong a tsunami will be. That way, people can have enough warning to get away and stay safe.

WHAT CAN WE DO TO PREVENT TSUNAMI