My 11 year old is currently producing a project on moons for this term's major assignment - "Space".

We've found some good websites with general information about the number of moons in the Solar System and the number of moons attached to specific planets (although the reported totals often vary from one website to the next), but we're not having much luck tracking down interesting and "quirky" facts about the moons.

The project doesn't have to be particularly detailed, the aim is to get the children to research and share information which isn't generally known about aspects of our Solar System.

Can anyone suggest some resources which might provide information about moons which a group of 6th-graders might find interesting?

First of all .. welcome to the BABB, reprise.
An internet search (google-yahoo-about.com, etc) is your best best. There are alot of sites that cater to youngsters, kidsastronomy.com is just one example. This is one such site with some solar system moon info .. here's one that might too much for an 11 yr old on his/her own, but has interesting stuff that a parent can help explain.

SEDS is good. http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nine...neplanets.html

Something that I find interesting is what the moons are name after.

Mars of course is the God of War, and Mars moons are Phobos and Deimos. From what I know Phobos is a refrence to "Fear" which is what you have when you go to war. I cannot remember what Deimos is a refrence to.

Jupiter--all the moons except one-Amalthea--are named after the lovers of Zeus, the equivalent in Greek mythology of the Roman god Jupiter.

Saturn--The moons appear to be named after mythological characters. (There was no description in the book--Just a list of names).

Uranus--10 of the 17 moons were discovered by the voyager 2 probe in 1986. The moons are named after the characters in the writing of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

Neptune--6 of the 8 moons were discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989

Pluto--One theory about Charon's development says that it is made of ice from Pluto, knocked off when Pluto collided with another object. (again no description of what it is named after).

I got this infomation from "Space Encyclopedia" by Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest published by DK.


I work with the education program at my work and we often have scouts in earning their badges. The younger ones have to learn about the solar system, and we do a fun activity that involves making a necklace with beads of various sizes and colors--representing the planets, and use small plastic beads (the kind that kids play with all the time) as spacers between the planet beads.

If you would like to know how many spacers we place between the planets and a general description of the planet beads, let me know and I will try to get the instructions from work.

Not to sound too repetitive, but there is a website associated with this board...ahem...

Commentary on various Solar System moons written by His Royal Majesty, Wizard Of Time And Space, can be found in The Pantry, part of Bitesize Astronomy.

__________________
"If a tree is cut down in the rainforest, and is used to make paper to print a book, and the book is really bad, and there's nobody that will read it, do you still hear a sucking sound?"
Charlie in Dayton, A.AsC.

I should have realised that Phil would have something about moons somewhere on the site. Doh!.

Thanks for the suggestions, they've given us some good ideas to pursue.

In the age of the internet, I sometimes find that when my kids are given a broad subject like "space", it's difficult for them to narrow it down into a specific sub-topic they want to research and to further refine the enormous amount of data out there into something relatively concise but also informative and interesting.

If would be careful with anything the BA says about moons.
See here and the following posts...

Deimos means Panic. Phobos and Deimos (fear and panic) were the war god's dogs (the dogs of war).

Charon was the ferryman who transported the dead across the river Styx.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

ops: (kicking myself, some interesting "bites" there too.. right under my nose, so to speak)

Charon was co-named for the discoverer, James Christy's wife Charlene. By a happy coincidence it is also the name of the boatman to the afterlife as Kaptain K has already said.