•What was the last human mission to the moon? Answer: Apollo 17 launched December 7, 1977. Eugene Cernan was the last man to walk on the moon.
•What is a moonquake? Answer: Similar to an earthquake but with much smaller impact, similar to the force of a small firecracker, moonquakes are caused when meteorites strike the Moon’s surface.
•What is a Blue Moon? Answer: A blue moon means two full Moons within one calendar month. They occur on average once every 33 months, or 37 per each century.
•What are some other Moon names? Answer: The first Moon after the winter solstice American colonists called Winter Moon and the Cheyenne tribe called the fourth full Moon of the year Spring Moon.
•The Moon has about 1/4th the gravity of the Earth. How much would a 200 pounds person weigh on the Moon? Answer: Thirty-four pounds.•Materials – Black tissue paper, Styrofoam ball, dowel and flashlight.
•Process – Shine the flashlight directly on the ball, then move the flashlight to show shadows on the moon as in the phases of the moon.
•Result - Moon Phases come from the reflection of the sun’s light not the shadow of the Earth. You will also see that for a Full Moon the Sun is behind the Earth and the Moon is in front, while for a New Moon the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun.
•Why does the moon appear to change size and shape during its different phases each month? Although half of the moon is always lit up by the sun, we can't always see the illuminated part because the angle at which we view the moon changes over the course of each month as the moon revolves around the earth. The part of the moon we see each night depends on the positions of the earth and moon relative to the sun. When we can’t see the moon at all (during the new moon phase), the moon is positioned between the earth and the sun so that the bright part of the moon is facing completely away from the earth.