By Steven van Roode
The transit of Venus has a lot of potential for science education, from elementary to college level. Various educational projects are being initiated that will increase you students’ understanding of our solar solar system and the historical development of scientific knowledge, as well as open up their horizons to today’s scientific frontiers. This page serves as a guide to the best educational material available on the internet. If you know of class room activities that deserve to be mentioned below, please contact me at s.vanroode@transitofvenus.nl.
Safe observing of the transit of Venus
Your students should in the first place have the opportunity to actually watch Venus projected against the solar disk on June 5 and 6, 2012. It’s not at all difficult to safely look at the sun, but you should always take proper measures to guarantee the protection of your pupils’ eyes. Rick Fienberg explains how to build a Sun Funnel to allow for safe group viewing. Make sure you have also seen Chuck Bueter’s Six ways to view the transit.
Connecting to other people: finding the sun’s distance
In history, observations of the transit of Venus were used to find the distance between the earth and the sun. Like in 2004, this experiment will be re-enacted in 2012. By combining the timings of the start and end of the transit from widely spaced locations on earth, the distance to the sun can be calculated. You can join in by using our phone app that will assist you in timing the start or end of the transit and submitting these observations to an international database. From all submitted observations, the sun-earth distance is subsequently computed in real-time. Afterwards, the database allows you to get in touch with others and exchange you experiences, pictures and movies.
From a didactical point of view, the international project presented by Udo Backhaus is very interesting. By taking simultaneous pictures of the transit, the effect of parallax is readily visible and its measurement can be used to find the distance to the sun.
Preparatory work
Prior to the transit you can have your students study different aspects of the transit of Venus. In our own workbook, you will find numerous problems related to the transit of Venus students can work on, ranging from angular and distance measurements involving parallax, to the mathematical analysis of the transit’s periodicity and light curves of transiting exoplanets. It’s available for free download, but you can also purchase hardcopies.
In their Space Math series, NASA presents Transit Math, providing 44 mathematical problems featuring transit applications. Also see their Transit Math website.
The Chasing Venus Teacher Resources from Smithsonian Institution Libraries includes eighteen exercises and lesson plans designed to accompany and enrich the study and discussion of the June 2012 transit of Venus, engaging grades K-12 in multiple subject areas.
NASA’s Sun-Earth Day 2012 website features many hands-on classroom activities for all levels of education. A large amount of educational material for grades K-12 is available online.
The European Southern Observatory still has its 2004 pages for teachers and students online, providing a series of educational sheet, powerpoint presentations and animations.
Transit of Venus, Australia 2012 is a joint educational project providing resources to enable students to participate in a re-enactment of a great scientific endeavour and in doing so learn valuable lessons in science, mathematics, history and geography.
Artistic work
Create Your Own Stained Glass Window. Kids design their own window with words and images, akin to those windows in St. Michael’s Church in Hoole, England, which celebrate the transit of Venus.
Let the school band play John Philip Sousa’s Transit of Venus March (1883). Below is a 2004 recording of this march by Penn High School Orchestra in Mishawaka, Indiana.