My Educational Activities are getting lots of hits and downloads, so I guess its all been worth the time. Anyway, I wanted to use my Activities in my Astronomy class to teach some things about the Solar System, and realized that instead of me blabbing away in front of a class giving 140 students a bunch of facts about each planet and moon, why not have them take an extended and enhanced tour of the Solar System in Celestia? They'd much rather do that than look at my face in front of a classroom
The problem was, my tours of the Solar System in my existing Activities 3.2 and 4.2, although reasonable, are just modest highlights of what we can find in our Solar System. This was intentional. They were initially designed to take no more than an hour or so to read and complete. They did not have many of the key facts about each planet and only visited a few moons. They included few spacecraft. They are good, but not suitable to serve as a primary teaching tool for the Solar System. Sooooooo.......
I am pleased to announce the completion of Activity 3.3 - E and 4.3 - E (extended). These Activities are enhanced and extended versions of Activity 3.2 and 4.2. They are F-U-L-L of facts about each planet. They visit its key moons. They show eclipses. They include several of the major spacecraft that have visited each planet and/or moons. They have extended flybys. They tell stories of asteroid impacts and possible bases on the Moon and Mars. Their list of external websites is doubled. Activity 3.3 - E also has a great starting script written for me by Don Goyette that introduces the use of scripts into my Activities for the first time.
Each Activity takes 3 - 4 hours to read and complete, comes with a detailed worksheet that can be filled in for a grade, and can serve as a primary teaching tool to learn about the Solar System. They make extensive use of Celestia 1.3.1 features. In fact, if a teacher is pressed for time, they can serve as the only teaching tool he/she needs on the Solar System. They cover the Solar System from the Sun to the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud of comets.
Since their length is not an issue, I would welcome additions to them. If any of you have a knock-out cel:url that captures some great event in our Solar System's mechanics, please send it to me and I'll put it into a revised version of the Activity.
Anyway, you can find them newly installed for download at my website at:
http://www.fsgregs.org/celestia
Enjoy
Frank G