Access Prior KnowledgeLesson 3: What are comets and asteroids?

Opening ActivityOpen Science textbook to page 552.Open Science workbook to page 171A to review homelearning.Open Science folder to review vocabulary words and outline for the chapter.Open Science journal and answer the following question:

 1. How are the inner and outer planets different?

Review Content Cards and Q-Cards in bin, sharing with partners quizzing each other quietly.Log in to clickers using student ID number.Be ready to review home learning when timer goes off.

Don't forget to write your home learning in your agenda page 172A.

1 Comets are the same size as planets.

Yes

No

Do you agree with the statement?

2 Asteroids can be hundreds of kilometers wideor as small as a pebble.

Yes

No

Do you agree with the statement?

3 Shooting stars are actually meteors.

Yes

No

Do you agree with the statement?

4 Most asteroids hit Earth.

Yes

No

Do you agree with the statement?

Comets

A comet is a frozen mass of ice and dust that orbit the Sun.

They are much smaller than planets and come from areas beyond Pluto.

Every year, several comets travel into the solar system moving in very long, oval paths and only a few are large enough to be seen without a telescope just before sunrise.

A comet has three main parts:

-Nucleus: This is the center of a comet. It is very small and made of dust and ice and exists when the comet is close or far from the Sun.

-Coma: The coma is a huge cloud of dust and evaporated gases that surround the nucleus. It forms when the comet gets close to the Sun. The Sun melts the nucleus and the coma makes the comet look bright and fuzzy.

-Tails: A comet has two long tails. The ion tail is made of gases and glows. Ion tails are thin and blue. The dust tail is made of dust that comes from the nucleus as it melts. A dust tail is wide and yellow.

First paragraphpg. 552

Asteroids

Unlike a comet, an asteroid is a rocky mass that orbits the Sun.

Asteroids are smaller than planets; sometimes they are called minor planets.

Unlike comets, most asteroids orbit in the asteroid belt, an area between Mars and Jupiter.

 -Jupiter’s gravity is what holds the asteroids in the asteroid belt.

First paragraphpg. 554

Meteors, Meteoroids and Meteorites

Meteoroids are small asteroids and can be the size of a very large rock but most are the size of pebbles or grains of sand.

Shooting stars are not really stars; they are meteors and form when a meteoroid hits the Earth’s atmosphere.

The meteoroid heats up quickly and gets so hot that it glows as a streak of light. Very bright meteors are called fireballs.

Most meteors burn up before they hit Earth’s surface, but some meteors do not burn up completely and may fall to Earth.

A meteorite is a piece of a meteor that lands on Earth and most are small. The largest known meteorite fell in Africa and weighed 60 tons.

First paragraphpg. 555

Asteroids

Comets

MeteorsAsteroidComet

MatchQuest

TextQuest

Don't forget to write your home learning in your agenda page 172A.

Answer questions in your Science Journal.

1. List the different parts of a comet.

2. Which part of the comet exists when it gets close tothe sun and when it is far away from the sun?

3. What are "shooting stars"?

4. How are comets and asteroids different?