Lunar phases explained for students, parents, and teachers.
Illustrations above, from top down:
Eclipse, crescent moon, full moon, gibbous moon.
Phases of the moon explained
A guide for students, teachers, and parents
The phases of the moon confuse many people. Even teachers can be caught out. A curious student arrives at school and asks why he or she could see the sun and the moon at the same time on the way to school. Shouldn't the earth's shadow be blocking out the moon? Why is the shadow on the moon not curved all the time? And so on.
Here is a simple exercise to help teachers and parents explain the phases of the moon in a fun way that your students will long remember.
A fun exercise
This is what you will need:
- a darkened room
- a lamp or flashlight
- a small ball (such as a ping pong ball, a tennis ball, or even a ball made from crumpled paper).
Place the shining lamp or flashlight in the darkened room, facing the student. Have the student hold the ball in the left hand at arm's length, midway between the light and the student's eyes. (You could put the ball on the end of a pencil or wooden skewer so that you can lift it up to make more of it is visible.)
Explain that the light source represents the sun, the ball in the student's hand is the moon, and the student's eyes are looking from earth.
If their “moon” is blocking the “sun” (which would be a total eclipse), have the student lower the moon a little. Tell the student to notice that all the sun's light is shining on one side of the moon; the side away from “earth”. This is what happens when there is a “new moon” each month.
Now have the student set the moon in orbit by moving it slowly to the left until it is at a right angle (90 degrees) to where it was at the first observation. Notice that as the moon swings around, the light on it looks like a crescent (at this stage it is called a crescent moon) that grows bigger until the right half of the moon is lit up. This phase now is called the first quarter, and in real time it would have taken about a week.
As the student continues to move the moon to the left it enters its gibbous phase, as the light continues to cover more of the moon (from the earth's view). When the moon is in line with both the earth and the sun — that is, in line with the student's head and the lamp — the moon seems to be fully lit, although only the part exposed to the sun is in fact illuminated. (If the student's head is blocking the light, which would be a lunar eclipse, raise the moon enough to allow the light to shine on it.) This is now a full moon, and in real time would have taken two weeks from the new moon we started with.
Continue moving the moon in its orbit until it reaches a 90 degree angle on the right side of the sun. It has again gone through its gibbous phase and has reached its third quarter. Continue to move it toward the sun — it again goes through a crescent stage until it reaches the new moon stage it started with.
Moon facts
- The moon is less than one-third the size of the earth. Its diameter is about 2160 miles (3476 kilometers) at its equator.
- It revolves around earth from west to east at a mean distance of 239,900 miles (386,000 kilometers).
- It takes 29½ days to rotate about its axis — which is also the time it takes to complete an orbit of the earth.
- In 1651, Italian astronomer Giovanni Riccioli called the dark areas of the moon “seas”. They are still referred to as seas today, even though it is known that no surface water exists on the moon.
How did the moon begin?
Various evolutionary theories of the moon's origin have been discarded over the years. Near the end of the 19th century, English astronomer Sir George Darwin (son of evolutionist Charles Darwin) suggested that the moon was once part of the earth but broke away by tidal action. In 1930, Sir Harold Jeffreys demonstrated that this was improbable.
In the 1950s another idea was that the moon formed elsewhere in the solar system and was captured by the earth. This was shown to be so close to impossible that it too was abandoned.
The true origin of the moon is given in the Bible's book of Genesis. The only eyewitness to the creation of the moon was God the Creator. And He tells us that He made the “greater light” (the sun) to rule the day and the “lesser light” (the moon) to rule the night. They were created on the fourth day of Creation Week, after He made the earth. And they were created intact from the beginning.
Related topics:
- Why do geese fly in a V shape?
- Does the Bible teach that the earth is flat?
- Has NASA verified the Bible's account of Joshua's long day?
- Why can't atheists find God?
- Where do UFOs come from?
Also of interest: Classroom activities for Christian schools
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