Interactive Applets and Animations

These sites offer opportunities to see concepts presented in engaging animations.

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Seasons http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/projects/data/Seasons/index.html

This Flash animation shows the earth orbiting the sun and dates for the various seasons. In addition, it shows the declination of the sun throughout the year, as well as how a constant beam of sunlight gets spread out and concentrated as the sun changes altitude. This resource is from Demonstrations and Animations for Teaching Astronomy. MSP full record

ASPIRE: Astrophysics Science Project Integrating Research and Education http://sunshine.chpc.utah.edu/Tlessons.php

This teacher resource page contains interactive laboratory activities and is part of a series centering on astronomy, Earth science, and physical science concepts. The following lessons are from this resource. MSP full record

Seasons Activity http://sunshine.chpc.utah.edu/javalabs/java12/seasons/seasons.html? ASPIRE_Session=7960d53934bbfc71eba0aef2da34b69b

Use a sundial to observe seasonal changes.

Seasons Exercise http://sunshine.chpc.utah.edu/javalabs/java12/seasons1.2a/applet12a.htm

Use seasons to determine your location.

Sun Angle Lab http://sunshine.chpc.utah.edu/labs/sunangle/sunangle.html

This interactive lab helps explain how the temperature on the surface of the earth is affected by the angle of the sun. It also explains how the surface area of light cast upon an object changes in relation to the angle of the light source.

Observe Seasonal Changes in the Amount of Sunlight Reaching Locations on Earth http://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/content/visualizations /es1704/es1704page01.cfm?chapter_no=visualization

This animation demonstrates how the tilt of the earth's axis causes seasonal variations in daylight. The introduction explains how the images, captured from a geostationary satellite positioned over Australia, were recorded daily from January to December. Students are instructed to look for the continent of Australia and to play the animation until they can identify the images that represent solstices and equinoxes. Movie controls allow students to repeat, pause, or step through the animation, which can give students more time to analyze the images. MSP full record

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Copyright June 2007 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.