The Misconception That I Ll Be Talking About Today Is That There Is a Dark Side of the Moon

The misconception that I’ll be talking about today is that there is a dark side of the moon. There have been music albums entitled the dark side of the moon and is spoken of a lot of times in vampire movies and a lot of students have the misconception that there is a dark side of the moon and there are mysterious things that happen on that side of the moon. There are things that we can’t see; there are maybe creatures that live there, there might be ice, or water…there are all kinds of misconceptions about what’s on the dark side of the moon. But it turns out there is no dark side of the moon. There is, however, a back side of the moon. There is a side of the moon that no one from earth has ever seen. Astronauts who have orbited the moon have seen the backside. We have pictures of the backside, and there’s really nothing spectacular back there. But there is a side of the moon that we never see; we always see the same face of the moon. The way that works is that it takes approximately 30 days for the moon to go all the way around the earth. It also takes 30 days for the moon to spin around one time. So because those two numbers are exactly the same, the same face always faces the earth. So it’s a really good idea to demonstrate this for students. Have an object in the center of the room, maybe a desk or a basketball representing the earth. Then the teacher or student can walk around, and every quarter of a revolution make a quarter of a rotation. In doing so, the same side of your body will always be facing the basketball or the earth. So if you go around 90 degrees and you turn 90 degrees you’re still facing the earth. Go around 180 degrees, then turn 180 degrees, the same face is still facing the earth. This is also a good way to teach about the phases of the moon. You can hold the ball in your hand at the overhead projector or the LCD projector (representing the sun shining on the ball) and the student will stand in the middle and be the earth as the ball (which represents the moon) goes around the earth. They can distinctly see the phases of the moon and that gets rid of a lot of misconceptions about the phases of the moon that is caused by clouds or the shadow of the earth on the moon. That’s a whole other misconception podcast in itself about what causes the faces of the moon. But that’s a very, very important and easy way to demonstrate that. Once students understand that, then they can understand the phases of Venus. The phases of Venus are how we finally proved that the earth is not at the center of the solar system, that the sun is. If the earth were at the center of the solar system we wouldn’t see phases of any of the planets, but because Venus is inside of our orbit and so is the sun, Venus goes through phases just like the moon does (i.e. Crescent, quarter, 3rd quarter, waxing gibbous, waning gibbous) It goes through the same phases that the moon does. And that was the evidence that was finally used to get rid of the idea that the earth is at the center of the solar system and at the center of the universe. That was a big, big day in science when that was finally proven. So it’s very important for students to understand not only that there is no dark side of the moon but how the phases of the moon are created. They can also see that when we have a full moon the backside of the moon is dark, but when we have a new moon the backside of the moon is fully lit up. So just because there is a back side does not mean that there is a dark side. Every side of the moon, every angle of the moon gets lit up at different times of the month but there is one side of the moon that is facing away from us.