Extra Ideas
(printable version)

Extra Ideas can be used in many ways:

• As extra activities to consider for the entire class during a Mission;
• As homework or extra credit assignments for student groups or individuals;
• As a way to challenge the accelerated students in your class

If you have additional Taking Off Ideas, please send them to us at agronauts@ncsu.edu and we will add your idea to the appropriate Mission.

Mission 4

• Investigate the concept of air pressure on Earth and on the Moon. What happens to plants at different atmospheric pressures?

• Investigate further the concept of gravity on Earth and on the Moon. Research to find out what happens to plants and seedlings in the absence of gravity.

• Investigate Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a mild depression that some people feel in the winter, when there is less light. Are there ways people use or introduce light in the wintertime to help make up for the lowered amounts from the Sun?

• What are some of the items included in survival kits that help people use light and heat or conserve light and heat in an emergency?

• Investigate refraction, the bending of light rays as they pass from one medium to another, to discover even more about the nature of light.

• Investigate further into the science behind how we see rainbows.

• What happens on Earth when the temperature and air conditions do not allow convection to occur?

• How do stars and planets use convection?

• Learn about the Hadley cells, convection cycles in the tropics.

• How is the shape of a candle flame related to convection?