Lesson: Asteroid Smash

Visit NASA’s website solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/asteroids/overview to learn about asteroids. Scroll down to the “Key Science Targets” section and select a few asteroids to discuss as a class. Allow students to share what information they found new or interesting. Then tell students that they are about to read an article on how astronomers track asteroids and try to prevent them from making impact with Earth.

Distribute or digitally share the “3-2-1 Notes” literacy skill sheet. Have a student read the headers of each section to remind the class how to fill out the chart. Select volunteers to read paragraphs of the article aloud. After reading, have students complete each section of their skill sheets. Then choose a few students to share what they wrote.

Play the video so that students can learn more about NASA’s DART mission. Post the following discussion questions to answer during or after the video:

• Why are some asteroids concerning to scientists while others are not? (Smaller asteroids, such as ones the size of a table, don’t cause that much damage to Earth. We get hit by those about once a year. Larger asteroids, such as ones the size of the Washington Monument, would cause a lot of damage to the region of Earth that they hit.)

• What is special about the asteroid that DART is targeting? (It is a binary asteroid. It has a main asteroid, Didymos A, and a secondary asteroid, Didymos B, which is a moon of Didymos A.)

• What is the goal of DART? (DART will be hitting Didymos B in hopes that it will change the speed of the asteroid. Changing the speed can cause an asteroid to miss Earth.)

• When will DART be used? (It will be launched in June 2021 and make impact in 2022.)

Have a volunteer read through the introduction of the “Making Size Comparisons” box on page 5 aloud. Then have students look at the “Object Size Comparison” chart. Have them think about how their height compares to 5 feet so they can visualize what 5 feet is. Then have students think about how their height relates to the width of a bus, length of a football field, length of a big bridge, or height of a tall mountain. Read through the example and ask: Why is this a multiplication equation? (Each of the buses is the same size, so this is a repeated addition,
or multiplication, scenario.) How do you isolate the variable n? (The equation involves multiplication. To isolate the variable, you need to do the inverse to both sides. Divide by 36 on both sides since division by 36 is the inverse of multiplication by 36.) Then have students complete the “Your Turn” questions individually. Review the answers and have volunteers provide the solution as well as the equation they wrote. For questions 3B and 3C, have students share their answer and reasoning.

Have students measure 3 smaller-sized objects at or near their home (such as a spoon or a picture frame). Then have them choose 10 larger objects at or near their home (such as the height of a door or the length of a room). For each object, have students choose which of the 3 smaller objects to compare the size to, explain why they chose that comparison object, estimate how many of the smaller objects make up the larger objects, and then actually calculate the size comparison.