Solar eclipses occur several times a year, but most people will be lucky if they see one total solar eclipse in their lifetime. There are two upcoming total solar eclipses that can be seen from different parts of the United States (August 21, 2017 and April 8, 2024), and they provide teachers with an amazing opportunity to engage students with a…

The purpose of this activity is to model the expansion of the universe by investigating the behavior of water waves. It is designed for students in the upper grades of physics and physical science who are learning about the wave nature of light and are ready to discover such important questions about science. The article explains first the Doppler…

The importance of using proportional scaled models in teaching about eclipses to elementary- and middle-level students is presented in this article. The authors illustrate how using creative models to display the basic concepts of shadows, scale, and perspective can foster a deeper understanding of how eclipses occur. Three innovative,…