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Two Marker Lights at the Porcupine House

Compare two zoo marker lights, interpret brightness data, and argue why the sun appears brighter than other stars.

Grade 5ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned to5-ESS1-1

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
13 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 5
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students interpret a light model to explain how distance affects apparent brightness.
Students distinguish the light a source gives off from the light received by an observer.
Students argue from evidence that the sun appears brighter because it is much closer to Earth.

How to use

Read the investigation and graph together. Have students complete the comparisons, then write an argument using both model data and star evidence.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

5-ESS1-1

Argue that the sun looks brighter than other stars because it is much closer to Earth.

Preview

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Two Marker Lights at the Porcupine House

Use a light model and star evidence to build an argument.

1. Investigate One Marker Light

Read the investigation. Use the graph to answer questions 1–5.

An Entry-Hall Light Model

A zoo team is planning two lighted markers for the porcupine-house entrance. Before installing them, educator Imani tests small battery-powered lamps in an empty entry hall, away from the animals. The lamps give off the same color of light. Imani uses the lamps to model a question about stars: What can make one light look brighter than another?

A light source's output is the total light it gives off. Apparent brightness describes how bright that source looks from an observer's location. A light meter measures how much light reaches its sensor. In this investigation, a larger meter reading means greater apparent brightness at the meter. These readings use comparison units, not measurements of a star's light.

For Test 1, Imani keeps the meter in one spot and aims Marker A toward it. She measures the background light with the marker off so she can remove that background from her results. She places the marker 1 meter, 2 meters, and 4 meters from the sensor. She keeps its light setting, direction, and battery power the same. She also keeps the hall lighting unchanged. At each distance, she records the light reaching the sensor. The graph shows her results.

For Test 2, Marker A keeps the same output as in Test 1. Marker B gives off four times as much total light as Marker A. Imani compares the markers separately, using the same meter and background conditions. Marker A, at 1 meter, gives a reading of 80 units. Marker B, at 4 meters, gives a reading of 20 units.

Imani also gathers astronomy evidence. The sun is a star, and it looks much brighter from Earth than other stars do. Distance measurements show that the sun is much closer to Earth than the other stars are. Scientists have also found that some stars give off more total light than the sun, yet look faint from Earth. The lamps are not real stars, and the hall does not copy the enormous distances in space. The model lets the team change distance while controlling a light's output. For safety, the team uses recorded astronomy information rather than looking directly at the sun.