Unit 12: The Universe and Solar System

Unit 12: The Universe and Solar System

This unit focuses on the origin and composition of the universe and the solar system.

Student Goals

• Construct a model to show the relative distance from the sun to the planets.
• State the scientific theories on how the universe and solar system were formed.
• List the bodies within our solar system.
• Know some ways scientists collect data about our universe.
• Identify information about the universe.
• Know the stages in the development of stars.

Unit Focus

• Know that investigations are conducted to explore new phenomena, to check on previous results, to test how well a theory predicts, and to compare different theories.
• Know that from time to time, major shifts occur in the scientific view of how the world works, but that more often, the changes that take place in the body of scientific knowledge are small modifications of prior knowledge.
• Understand that no matter how well one theory fits observations, a new theory might fit them as well or better, or might fit a wider range of observations, because in science, the testing, revising, and occasional discarding of theories, new and old, never ends and leads to an increasingly better understanding of how things work in the world, but not to absolute truth.
• Know how the characteristics of other planets and satellites are similar to and different from those on the Earth.
• Know that the stages in the development of three categories of stars are based on mass: stars that have the approximate mass of our Sun, stars that are two- to three-stellar masses and develop into neutron stars, and stars that are five- to six-stellar masses and develop into black holes.
• Identify the arrangement of bodies found within and outside our galaxy.
• Know astronomical distance and time.
• Understand stellar equilibrium.
• Know various scientific theories on how the universe was formed.
• Know the various ways in which scientists collect and generate data about our universe (e.g., X-ray telescopes, computer simulations of gravitational systems, nuclear reactions, space probes, and supercollider simulations).