1. Introductory questions for Detecting Extrasolar Planets from Space Science Sequence Unit 4 Great Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS) http://www.lhsgems.org

2. Do you think there are planets orbiting other stars?... How many?

3. Are all stars the same size and temperature as the Sun?

4. How might the type of star affect whether it has habitable planets?

5. If there is a certain zone around a star where life might exist, what must be critical qualities of that zone?

6. What things would you want to know about a newly discovered planet? ooo

7. Why would exoplanets be hard to detect? What methods do astronomers use to find planets?

8. What’s this?

9. What happens when a planet transits a star? Make a model that you can use to demonstrate a planet transit.

10. For each team of 4–6 students: 1 snake book light 1 prepared Ping-Pong ball (see Getting Ready) several round, opaque plastic beads (ranging in size from 8 mm to 16 mm in diameter) 2 or more pipe cleaners 1 or 2 chopsticks or thin wooden dowels black thread 4" x 6” index cards tape paper or plastic bag to hold the materials Book lights: create a model “star” by setting up a light bulb and socket in the middle of the classroom for teams to demonstrate their transits.

11. What kind of orbit would allow us to see a transit? Ball-on-stick demo

12. What’s wrong with this statement: “If a star has an orbiting planet, astronomers can usually detect it by transit observations”

13. Kepler is designed to monitor brightness of 100,000 stars simultaneously for over 3 years.

14. Scale of the model? Return to questions about planets (slide 6) Are there more questions? Do transit observations help us answer the questions? More about Kepler mission...