Michael A. Harris
Prior to starting the lessons on stellar evolution the students will be assigned homework involving readings from the textbook and from any current articles available at the time. I will begin the lessons on stellar evolution with an open discussion to answer any of their questions from the readings and to provide a basic overview of stellar evolution. After the discussion, the students will forms groups and each group will be responsible to describing how a specific star will evolve. This activity will continue for a second class period. At the end of which, the students will present their information.
The second lesson will involve science process skills such as classifying, making a data table and graphing. As homework from the previous lesson, the students will read about the H-R diagram and be asked to review star characteristics from an earlier unit. The lesson will begin with a discussion of the homework and an introduction to the H-R diagram. The students will given the names of two stars and also be asked to choose two stars from the appendix in their textbook and create data tables that show each start's characteristic such as luminosity, temperature, color, and current point of evolution (main sequence, red giant, white dwarf, etc.). The students will then use this data to plot the star on the H-R diagram.
The third lesson will involve the students determining the mass of the sun and its age and position on the H-R diagram. They will then be asked to describe how the sun will evolve from its current condition, and more importantly, how this will affect life on Earth. This lesson will focus more on mathematics and determining how much material the sun is burning and how long the sun will continue to do this. As the students grasp the processes of stellar evolution, we will look at how Earth is affected by this process. The students will answer the central question of how does the sun's evolution affect life on Earth. As a final activity, the students will write a letter to NASA stating what they have learned about stellar evolution and how the sun will affect life on Earth as it evolves.
