2010年太空站月曆下載

2000年人類首度在太空中建立了繞地球運轉的低軌道太空站，轉眼就要邁入第十年了，太空站的規模已非昔日，而且已經變成了國際合作的太空研究計畫了。

您知道太空站怎麼組合起來的嗎?


來趟太空站之旅吧!


美國太空總署(NASA)為了太空站十周年慶，推出了2010年太空站月曆，除了擁有從太空站拍攝的照片外，還有NASA的歷史里程碑，以及1998年以來國際太空站計畫的有趣事件。月曆上還標示了每月的新月、上弦、滿月及下弦發生日期，以及春分、夏至、秋分及冬至。首頁還有一張太空站年表。

您可以彩色列印作為教室環境佈置。

月曆下載:

Download calendar (10.2 Mb PDF)

做一個太空站模型:
教案下載(含黑白紙模型，適合4-8年級)
彩色太空站紙模型下載 / 製作說明下載 / 原始網頁

教學資源: 數量級(尺度)

學生對數量級常常沒有概念，尤其是數值特別大或特別小時。因此像奈米(Nanometer)，雖然天天掛在口頭，儼然成了時髦的科技名詞，可是奈米到底有多大，還是沒有概念。奈米應該是很具體的長度單位，卻竟然成了抽象名詞!

底下是美國科學教師協會(NSTA)整理提供的連結，您可以獲得有關數量級的相關資料，作為教學參考。

新聞報導
the News: Scale

網路資源
On the Web: Scale

Science Scope雜誌檔案
Articles from the Science Scope Archives: Scale

至於奈米有多大，請看下列影片，影片中三種解釋方法，您喜歡哪一種? 學生會喜歡哪一種?

演化的演化:達爾文《物種起源》150年

在達爾文《物種起源》出版的150年後，科學家對演化有持續性的卓越發現與更深入的理解。美國國家科學基金會特別建立「演化的演化:達爾文《物種起源》150年」這個網站，透過值得深思品嘗的短文、充滿奇趣的訪談、廣泛詳盡的年表、舊約聖經創造論的挑戰，讓你深入了解演化論的演化。

網站網址:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/darwin/?WT.mc_id=USNSF_51

千載難逢的教學機會--讓學生把蝴蝶養到太空去!

蝴蝶在太空 

11月16日升空的亞特蘭提斯號太空梭載著一批嬌客—姬紅蛺蝶(或稱小紅蛺蝶 Painted Lady)到國際太空站。

這批幸運的太空「蝶」(應該說太空「蟲」，因為現在還是毛毛蟲) 將在太空站陪著太空人生活幾個月。這不是因為怕太空人無聊，也不是要為單調的太空站帶來一些生氣，而是在進行一項嚴肅卻又令人興奮的科學研究--觀察蝴蝶在失重狀態下的生命週期和行為。

正在教小朋友養蠶的老師，這次可以把毛毛蟲養到太空去。太空蝶養在特殊的養殖箱中，提供食物、水及安全的環境，並隨時提供照片及現場直播的視訊傳回地球，小朋友可以隨時進行觀察，老師也可以鼓勵小朋友同時養條毛毛蟲來做比較。

親愛的老師和家長，帶著孩子和全世界的學生一起來觀察太空蝶吧!

請按下列連結:

• 我要觀察太空蝶(養殖箱的背景方格邊長2cm)
• 我要看照片

下載教學指引
(必須填寫E-mail, 城市，選擇non-USA, 學校, 年級, 及參與學生數, 然後按Register註冊)

2009國際天文年十月觀測星體: 仙女星系

2009國際天文年活動，每個月均提出一個很容易觀測的天體，NASA更拍攝影片介紹，提供學生及大眾觀測參考。

十月份觀測的天體是仙女星系，九月份是木星。吃過晚飯後，去散步順便抬頭看看，目前這兩個天體都在天頂附近，而且只要天上沒有雲，找個黑暗的地方，肉眼就可以看到，如果能用雙筒可以看得更清楚，如果要幫學生辦觀星活動，這也是很好的觀測對象，天黑後就可以觀測，活動可以早早結束，學生也不用很晚回家!

請按下列連結，有NASA的影片、旁白稿、中文意譯及鏈結參考資料:

十月星空: 仙女星系
http://tyhsalan.blogspot.com/2009/10/andromeda-galaxy.html

九月星空: 木星
http://tyhsalan.blogspot.com/2009/09/planet-jupiter.html

你可以讓學生學學第一位發現仙女星系的波斯天文學家al-Sufi，畫下他所看到的仙女星系。

你也可以讓學生學學伽利略 (看了百萬小學堂才知道這個字「伽」在這裡要唸ㄍㄚ) 發現木星的四顆衛星繞著木星轉，這裡有教學設計供你參考：

木星觀測紀錄單(中文)

木星觀測學習單(中文進階版)

木星觀測教學設計(英文)

地球科學週(2009/10/11-17)教學資源

這是地球科學週宣傳影片:

地球科學週是由美國地質研究所(AGI)和太空總署(NASA)以及其他贊助者合作，每年一次的活動，目的在鼓勵學生、老師及一般大眾去探索自然世界，認識地球科學。

今年的主題是「了解氣候(Understanding Climate)」，活動網頁在:
http://www.earthsciweek.org/index.html

AGI並對美國學童辦理系列競賽:

攝影比賽
主題是「氣候如何改變我生活世界的形貌」

視覺藝術競賽
主題是「我居住地的氣候」

小論文競賽
只要是與氣候有關聯的主題皆可。

雖然上述比賽只對美國學生開放，不過老師們也可以做為指定學生作業的參考。

另有一項攝影比賽是對全球開放的:

2009國際地球行星年暨地球科學週攝影比賽
主題是「探索環球的地球科學」

不管你住在哪裡，地球科學就在你周遭。只要走出戶外，地球科學就在你眼前的河流湖泊，你頭頂的天空，你腳下的大地。地球科學包括: 地質、海洋、大氣、水文、古生物以及其他與地球有關的科學。用你的照片告訴全球，在你居住的自然環境中，人們如何從事地球科學的探索。

報名截止日期是美東時間十月16日下午五點，也就是台北時間17日上午5點，報名表在:
http://www.earthsciweek.org/contests/iypephotocontest/IYPE-ESWPhotoEntryForm.pdf

可透過電子郵件報名。

活動網頁還包括了相當豐富的教學資源，有

老師的:
http://www.earthsciweek.org/forteachers/index.html

學生的:

http://www.earthsciweek.org/forstudents/index.html

NASA也提供系列教學影片、多媒體及教學活動:
http://climate.nasa.gov/esw/

他山之石：美國科學教師所認知的科學教育現況

美國科學教師協會(NSTA)在2009年8月24日公布一項美國科學教育現況的非正式調查結果，調查對象為分布全美的科學教師，人數超過3500人。調查聚焦在科學教育觀點、科學教學現況、及專業成長等三個範疇:

科學教育觀點

美國國小教師79%同意要有統一的國定課程，但是51%的大學教育者反對。

53%的國小教師支持全國性評量，但是52%的高中教師不贊成。

科學教學現況

科學教師最關心的議題是：學生學習動機(30%)、州測驗(17%)、缺乏科學教材(15%)、大眾對教學的看法(12%)。

超過半數的老師認為科學教師最重要的能力是能把教材內容轉換成學習。67%的老師同意把日常生活中的問題融入課堂教學是使學生關心科學並對科學發生興趣的最佳方式。

這項調查同時也揭露「不讓任何孩童落後(No Child Left Behind，NCLB）」這項政策一直困擾教師，55%的科學教師認為這項政策對他們的科學教學造成負面衝擊，同時48%也認為對學校產生負面影響。為什麼? 有一個明顯的理由就是：NCLB在閱讀和數學的年度測驗及負責條款，迫使許多國小教師顯著降低了科學的教學時間。另外，29%的科學教育者希望能在小學階段加強科學，19%希望小班教學，16%希望能有與他人合作的機會。

教師專業發展

許多科學教師(58%)反應他們並未接受足夠的專業成長機會，尤其是在科學方面。74%的國小教師回應，提供給他們的非科學領域的成長機會更多。

老師們只會參加他們認為最有助益的專業成長研習，51%的老師喜歡1至4天與同事一起參加的活動，49%喜歡研討會，26%喜歡一個星期或數星期的課程和研習班。

Arizona州立大學的科學教育教授Julie Luft說：支持學生成就的唯一最重要因素就是高品質的教學。當老師接受能使其科學知識及教學技能都跟上時代潮流的專業成長研習，學生的成就會極有效率地提升。

原文請看

http://www.nsta.org/about/pressroom.aspx?id=56420&print=true

調查結果:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=DLUwDYbQn0ii5SWdN3YN1ZoovGdpnp3j6C94PMIct7w_3d

看來美國老師也有一綱多本的問題，而且多數小學老師偏向一本，而大學教授偏向多本。嗯，「德不孤，必有鄰! 」(抱歉，引用不當)

還有，立意良善的No Child Left Behind在將近半數的美國老師眼中，居然對學校造成傷害，看來政策不能以立意良善來辯護，實施策略或施行細則可能「狐假虎威」(抱歉，又引用不當)。

不過有一句話倒是放諸四海皆準：學生的成就有賴於高品質的教學，而高品質的教學則來自優秀的教師。優秀的教師要具備怎樣的特質呢? 看來美國老師認為教材內容不等於學生的學習，優秀教師的最重要能力是將教材內容「翻譯」成學生的學習! 這點倒與我們對台灣教師的調查結果一致。可見，「英雄所見略同」(應該沒有引用不當!)。

歡迎您提出看法! 請按下列的[回應]，來查看別人的意見或發表你的意見!

美國高中生在太空總署噴射推進實驗室的暑假

除了上暑期輔導外，我們可以給學生什麼樣的暑假? 學生的暑假活動是否可以更有啟發性? 更有意義? 更有助於他往後的學習?

今年暑假，美國太空總署(NASA)噴射推進實驗室(JPL)提供300多位美國高中生一個充滿挑戰性的暑假。他們可以參與冰雪圈(Cryosphere)監視，或是參加木衞二--木星系統任務小組，測試任務軌道的合適性，或是加入ATHLETE月球六足機器人計畫小組，進行影像處理工作，讓機器人可以自動搬運貨物。

以下是三位參與這項NASA/JPL教育計畫的高中生訪談:

文字稿如下:

My (High School) Summer at JPL (09.14.09)

Dot Silverman:

I'm working on classifying different features on the Earth's surface by analyzing remote sensing data from satellites orbiting Earth.

I was...very exciting, [laughs] because it works. I took a lot of different pictures.

I wrote an algorithm, a cryosphere algorithm, classifying ice, dark ice, water and land.

I came here and, truthfully, I didn't know what an algorithm was.

You pick a lot of stuff up here. And it's nice, because there's so many opportunities to learn new things.

Pepito Escarce:

I'm working on the Europa Jupiter System Mission. I'm working with their team.

And I'm working on the project that possibly will be sending an orbiter to Europa in 2020.

We're helping them determine if the trajectory they have right now is in fact the best trajectory.

The engineers were joking that I could go to college, get a master's, get a PhD, come back and the satellite still would barely have launched.

I think the greatest thing about this experience has been getting to go around and look at all the different parts of JPL, because there's just so much that the...that the Lab does.

Even if I like what I'm working on now, there's just so many other things I could work on.

If...if I ever came to work here. Which would be really neat.

Jourdan Hoapili:

Currently I'm working on ATHLETE, the robot. And I kinda do an image processing deal, where I can make it autonomously pick up cargo.

The basic idea is that it would be going to the moon.

And it would be able to manipulate and move and help astronauts pick up cargo, move around habitats, stuff like that.

It's amazingly cool. I could be doing some boring task or something. But, no. I got to work on a really cool robot. And it's exciting.

And maybe, one day, you know, if it's on the moon, I'll be like, whoa! You know, I worked on that! That's cool!

And if I ever see, like, it go pick up cargo, or, like, I see a marker, I'll be, like, Hey, I designed that!

教學資源: 凸面鏡成像

太空人的面罩反光就像凸面鏡。請仔細觀察面罩，透過面罩可以看到另一位太空人的像。凸面鏡形成的像是正立縮小虛像。下面網址Java程式可以用來說明凸面鏡的成像情形。

你可以使用滑鼠拖曳左邊的紅色物體，來觀察像的變化。
http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/applets/Intro_physics/kisalev/java/dmirr/index.html

冰雪圈之旅

您知道甚麼是冰雪圈(Cryosphere)嗎?

冰雪圈是由地表上水以固態存在的區域所組成，包括雪地、海冰、冰河、永凍層、冰原、以及冰山。

您知道全球暖化對冰雪圈產生甚麼影響嗎?

讓我們透過NASA衛星多年來的觀測資料，來一趟穿越時空的冰雪圈之旅，了解一下冰雪圈，以及冰雪圈的變遷所帶來的衝擊。

旁白文稿如下:

A Tour of the Cryosphere 2009 (09.02.09)

Narrator: Though cold and often remote, the icy reaches of the Arctic, Antarctic, and other frozen places affect the lives of everyone on Earth.

We start our tour in Antarctica. Where they meet the sea, mountains of ice crack and crumble. The resulting icebergs can float for years. Ice shelves surround half the continent. They slow the relentless march of ice streams and glaciers like dams hold back rivers. But the region is changing. As temperatures increase, we see a growing number of melt ponds. As this heavy melt water forces its way into cracks, ice shelves weaken and can ultimately collapse. After twelve thousand years, the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed in just five weeks.

Offshore, sea ice forms when the surface of the ocean freezes, pushing salt out of the ice. The cold salty surface water starts to sink, pumping deeper water out of the way, powering global ocean circulation. These currents influence climate worldwide.

Most ice exists in the cold polar regions, but we see glaciers like these in the Andes all over the world. Most are shrinking.

Here in North America, millions of people experience the cryosphere every year. Eastward moving storms deposit snow like thick paint brushes. Mountain snow packs store water. Snow melt provides three-quarters of the water resources used in the American west. Substantial winter snows produced a green Colorado in 2003, but dryer conditions the previous year limited vegetation growth and increased the risk of fires.

In the Rocky Mountains, there are patches of frozen ground called permafrost that never thaw. These regions are unusual in the mid-latitudes. But farther north, permafrost is more widespread and continuous, covering nearly a fifth of the land surface in the Northern Hemisphere.

Sea ice varies from season to season and from year to year. Data show that Arctic sea ice has shrunk dramatically in the last few decades. The effects could be profound. As polar ice decreases, more open water could promote greater heating. More heating could lead to faster melting, reinforcing the cycle. If this trend continues, the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in the summer by the end of the century.

These changes in ice cover are not limited to oceans. Greenland's ice sheet contains nearly ten percent of the Earth's glacial ice. Glaciers in western Greenland produce most of the icebergs in the North Atlantic. After decades of stability, Greenland's Jakobshavn ice stream, one of the fastest flowing glaciers in the world, has changed dramatically. The ice has thinned, and the front retreated significantly. Between 1997 and 2003, the glacier's flow rate nearly doubled to five feet an hour.

These are just some of the cryospheric processes that NASA satellites observe from space. Continued observation provides a critical global perspective, as our home planet continues to change - day to day, year to year, and further into the future.

Find this article at:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/TourOfCryosphere09.html

全球暖化對蜜蜂有何影響?

全球暖化讓春天每年提早半天報到，植物開花期歷年來已經提早超過十天。那麼對未能提早報到的蜜蜂寶寶而言，將找不到花蜜；對提早開花的植物而言，則沒有足夠的蜜蜂來授粉；對人類而言呢? 應該不只是影響餐桌上的內容!

請看下面的影片。

影片旁白文稿如下：

Feeling the Sting of Climate Change

[music]

[music] Every year, farms and fields play host to a symphony, of sorts. Polination... the springtime syncopation of flowering plants and the animals that feast on the nectar and pollen they produce. Over millenia, pollinators like honey bees have evolved a well-timed dance with plants. But now, plants may be changing their tune. Spring green-up... ...when plants wake from winter and sprout leaves. It's such a global phenomenon that NASA satellites can see it from space.
[music]

[music] Sensors, such as Modis on NASA's AQUA and TERRA satellites, can show us how green our planet is throughout the year - and they've captured something strange. In the Northern U.S., spring green-up is starting about a half-day earlier each year. The likely cause? Our warming climate. But is pollination also moving earlier? The images can't detect individual flowers, so scientists have been left to guess... until now. NASA research scientist Wayne Esaias spearheads a special team gathering data directly in the field. They're the honey bees in his Maryland backyard.

[Wayne Esaias:] "Honey bees are great data collectors for understanding the processes of pollination. Bees fly two and a half miles in all directions to scout for bee forage and bring back pollen and nectar. So therefore they sample a very large range of environments." Weighing the hives, Wayne can detect when nectar peaks and ebbs each year.

[Wayne Esaias:] "During the winter, the hive loses weight as they eat the honey to feed the babies and keep warm. And then when plants start blooming in abundance, the hive starts gaining weight. It can gain a tremendous amount of weight. I've had a hive gain 25 pounds in one day." Wayne's been keeping tabs on his bees for less than twenty years. But in that time, pollination has moved more than ten days earlier.

[Wayne Esaias:] "That's completely in sync with what the satellite data shows - the world here getting greener earlier in the spring by about a half a day each year." here getting greener earlier in the spring by about a half a day a year."

[music]

[Wayne Esaias:] "If we have a few scale hive measurements with the wall-to-wall coverage of the satellite, we can then extrapolate those scale hive measurements of when the nectar flows occur extrapolate those scale hive measurements of when the nectar flows occur to very large areas of the country." Now, to get a bee's eye perspective of how pollination is changing in very different environments - say, deserts or mountains - Wayne's doing a little '"networking."

[Wayne Esaias:] "HoneyBeeNet is a network of citizen-scientist beekeepers that volunteered to weigh their hives to give us more data points, to see how the nectar flows are changing in all different parts of the country." If pollination dates keep creeping forward, plants and pollinators could move out of sync. Currently, young bees are able able to grow and get out on the hunt by the time plants bloom. But if plants bloom before bees are ready, both miss out. The plants don't get pollinated, and the bees go hungry. But more than just bees might miss a meal. NASA satellites can help us understand how climate change might affect what's on our dinner table.

[Wayne Esaias:] "Modern agriculture requires bees as part of the production. It's as mandatory for food production as as pieces of irrigation pipe and fuel for tractors. So if we're to understand the impact of climate change on our ecosystems, we must understand how this plant-pollinator interaction is being impacted by climate change."

Find this article at:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/HoneyBee.html

教學資源：透鏡成像

介紹一個"透鏡成像"的教學網頁，

http://resources.edb.gov.hk/itedu/phys/lens/index.htm

不僅可以學物理，還可以學英文，廣東話也可以!