Information Report: Earth and the Moon

As the fourth grade students explored the theme "Where we are in place and time," they inquired into Earth's orientation in space and how it relies on the vast universe in order to survive. At the end of the inquiry process, students were tasked to create a 3D model of the Solar System and then write an information report describing the Earth's relationship with another object in the universe. Below is our featured student work about the Earth's relationship with its closest neighbor, its moon.

Earth's Relationship with the Moon

by Charlene Lin 林采奕, 4th grade

The moon is Earth's satellite, and the moon orbits around the Earth. The moon moves in a counterclockwise orbit around the Earth. It takes 29.5 days to finish an orbit aound the Earth.

The moon gives the Earth light when it is dark, so the moon is very important to the Earth. The Earth's moon is different from other planets' moon because of the different sizes, and the different rocks. At night, the sun shines on the moon, and causes the moon to reflect the light from the sun, and it is called moonlight. Not only you could see the moon at night, but you could also see the moon during the day too!

The moon rotates around the Earth. The Earth makes the moon rotate around it, because the Earth pulls the moon by gravity. The Earth has liquid water, wind, land, and many other things, which the moon doesn't have, but the moon has mountains too, which the Earth has. The moon causes low tides and high tides of Earth, that causes people to be unhappy, because they have to move further from the beach. Otherwise, the people would get pulled into the tides.

The moon and Earth have many things in common. They need each other. The Earth needs the moon for light, and the moon needs the Earth to orbit. Some astronauts landed on the moon to explore its surface. They wore spacesuits because there was no air to breathe on the moon. Buzz Aldrin was one of the first men to land on the moon. The astronauts spent 21 hours on the moon. They collected rocks from the surface, and also tested the rocks.