View transcript
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(playful music)
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(upbeat music)
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- Welcome to Storytime
Science at the Exploratorium.
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I'm Viv, and today's episode is The Moon.
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We're gonna be reading this book,
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"Moon: Earth's Best Friend".
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And Moon tells her own story
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with the help of Stacy McAnulty
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and the pictures are by Stevie Lewis.
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So let's get to the book.
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(upbeat music)
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Look up, look up, look up!
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It's me, Moon.
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I'm Earth's best friend.
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Where Earth goes, I go.
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We have been together since
the beginning, almost.
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Let me tell you our story.
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Once upon a time, about
4.5 billion years ago,
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a space rock the size of
Mars crashed into baby Earth.
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Big old mess.
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Pieces of rock, chunks of earth, and lava
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were blasted into space.
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This crash trash came together to make me,
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a satellite.
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Actually, I'm Earth's
only natural satellite.
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Natural means not created by Earthlings.
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Satellite means I circle the earth.
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She has thousands of
human-made satellites too,
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they're mostly metal and plastic,
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not exactly best friend material.
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Guess that makes me Earth's
number one real side kick.
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It takes me 27.3 days to
go around the earth once.
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It also takes me 27.3 days to spin once.
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Coincidence?
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I think not.
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It means I'm dependable.
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My face always smiles at Earth.
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You never see my back side,
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but you probably notice I
look different every night.
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Fun, right?
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Check out my phases.
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New moon, waxing crescent,
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then first quarter,
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waxing gibbous,
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full moon,
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which doesn't make wolves howl,
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waning gibbous,
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last quarter,
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waning crescent,
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and back to new moon.
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Some other planets have best friends too.
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I am Moon, but I'm not the
only moon in the solar system.
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Jupiter has moons, so does Neptune,
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Saturn, Mars, Uranus has moons,
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and they have all these different names.
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Io, Callisto, Titan, Ganymede.
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Of all the moons, I'm the fifth biggest.
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I'll always be Earth's pal.
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But that doesn't mean we're twinsies.
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She's bigger, four times bigger.
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The earth is 24,874 miles around,
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but I'm only 6,784 miles around.
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And her gravity is six times stronger.
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Gravity is the invisible force
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that makes an apple fall to the ground
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instead of flying up to the sky.
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A cow that weighs 600 pounds on Earth
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would weigh only 100 pounds on me.
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And speaking of cows, Earth has cows,
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and nursery rhymes, and
nursery rhymes starring cows.
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But a cow has never jumped over me.
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I'm too far for even a
kangaroo to make that leap.
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The average distance between Earth and me
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is 238,855 miles.
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You could fit 30 earths in that distance,
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and probably a gazillion cows.
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I do remember that nursery rhyme,
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and the cow jumped over
the moon, not true.
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BFFs help each other out.
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I keep Earth from being too wobbly.
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This might be the most
important thing I do
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and you probably didn't
even know about it.
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With me, gently spinning,
my gravity at work.
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Without me, topsy-turvy.
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Don't worry, moon gazers,
you're never without me.
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I don't disappear during the day,
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I'm always here for Earth.
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You just can't see me
when it's super bright out
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or when it's cloudy,
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or when I'm on the
other side of the Earth.
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I can prove I'm always here.
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Check out the oceans tides.
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Oh, I love these pictures.
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High tide happens twice a day.
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Low tide happens twice a day.
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That's gravity again, my gravity,
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pulling on Earth's oceans.
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I have the best views of Earth.
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And Earth has the best views of me.
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But some Earthlings
wanted to see me up close.
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I'm the only other place in the universe
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where man has set foot.
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And I do mean man.
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I'm still waiting for my
first female astronaut.
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You know there are female astronauts,
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but none of them have landed on the moon.
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I've had 12 moon walkers
and a few left footprints.
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And some of those
footprints are still here.
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No wind or rain or snow to mess them up.
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Other things you won't find on me,
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oxygen,
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liquid water,
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animals, including cows,
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plants, mosquitoes, which
is a good thing, I think.
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Things you will find on me,
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rocks, really big rocks, more rocks,
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and some presents from Earth,
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this is stuff left behind
by untidy astronauts.
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Nail clippers, a falcon
feather, a golf ball,
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a hammer, and an American flag.
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Earth and I have so much fun together.
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Like when we play eclipse.
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Solar eclipse, I hide the
sun for a few minutes.
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We play this during the day.
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Lunar eclipse, Earth's
shadow passes over me,
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we play this at night.
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These don't happen too often,
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but when they do, they're very exciting.
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I'm always here for Earth.
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I'm always here for you.
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Where Earth goes, I go.
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And where Earth goes, you go.
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Guess that makes us best friends too.
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Oh, and we have two truths
and a myth with Moon.
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So this is a little bit of a game,
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can you guess which two
statements about me are true
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and which one is not?
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Round one,
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A, wolves and dogs howl at me,
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B, I'm moving farther away from Earth,
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C, I have an iron rich core at my center.
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The answer B and C are true.
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On average, I'm approximately
238,855 miles from Earth.
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Every year, I move about
an inch farther away.
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And like Earth, I have layers,
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crust, mantle, and core.
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That means A is the myth.
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Even when I'm full,
animals do not howl at me.
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But because I reflect so much
more light when I'm full,
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animals can be more active at night.
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Round two, A, 12 men have
stepped on my surface,
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B, I'm made of cheese,
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C, I affect the oceans tides.
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Answer, of course, B is a myth.
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About 500 years ago,
playwright John Haywood joked,
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the moon is made of a green cheese.
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And it seems the rumor has
been alive and well ever sense.
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My Swiss cheese look comes from craters
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made by space rocks, like
asteroids and meteors
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crashing into me.
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A and C are true.
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NASA has sent 12 astronauts
for brief moonwalks.
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All were American men.
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And my gravity does
pull on Earth's oceans,
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which creates the tides.
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And lastly, round three,
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A, Earthlings always
see the same side of me,
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B, I belong to no Earthling,
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C, I make Earthlings crazy.
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Answer, both A and B are facts.
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Because I rotate and
revolve at the same speed,
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you're always gazing
at the same hemisphere.
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However, I don't have a dark side.
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Suns light does shine on all parts of me,
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just at different times.
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Half of Earth is always lit by the sun,
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half of me is always lit too.
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And I don't belong to anyone,
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a 1967 international treaty
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prohibits any nation or person or business
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from owning any natural objects in space.
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The myth about me making people crazy
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is just, well, crazy.
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I also can not help you fall in love
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or turn your friend into a werewolf.
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My influence is limited.
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(upbeat music)
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So now we have our moon activity.
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We're gonna be making a spinning top
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and we're gonna be using a CD,
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I'll explain what that is in a sec,
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and a marble that's
gonna be glued in place,
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and another little kind
of, sort of round bead,
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that's gonna represent the moon,
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that also orbits or circles the earth.
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And we're gonna be using
a hot glue dispenser here.
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Okay, so this is a CD.
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I don't know if you know what a CD is,
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you might wanna ask the
very oldest person you know
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what a CD is.
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Music used to come on this,
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or you could load up
programs on your computer
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using one of these things.
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There even used to be
in the older computers,
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a slot where you just stuck this right in.
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We're going to use it make
a really cool spinning top.
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So you've got your CD and
you wanna take a marble.
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Let's see, I have green
marbles, and I have blue.
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I'm gonna use the blue marble.
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Because a lot of times,
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because we have so many oceans on Earth,
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people like to say that the earth
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is like a big, blue marble in space,
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so let's use a blue marble.
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And we're gonna just the
marble right in the hole
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in the center of the CD.
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Now the marble doesn't
go all the way through,
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there's a lot more of it on the top
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than there is on the bottom.
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That little bottom part
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is what makes a really
good, smooth surface
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for this CD to spin.
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We're gonna take our hot glue dispenser,
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and we're just gonna glob
a bunch of glue on it
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to hold it in place.
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All right, my hot glue dispenser
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is almost as hot as it could be.
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Let me see if I have
it on the hot setting.
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It's on low.
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I'm gonna just for a second
switch it to the high setting.
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Okay, a little bit better.
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And I'm blobbing a bunch of glue on there.
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And I'm gonna wait for that
to dry, but not really.
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And I'm going to add a little dab of glue
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on the outside edge,
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that's gonna be for my little satellite.
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And I have a nice, little--
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It's a tiny green bead,
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and I chose green, because
just like the moon says
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about herself in the book,
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sometimes people said the
moon was made of green cheese,
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of course, it's not really,
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but it's a green bead,
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just to kind of highlight that
tale, that misinformation.
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So now there's my moon, that's
gonna be orbiting the earth,
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and there's my earth,
pretty globed with hot glue,
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just to hold it in place.
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I'm gonna set this down so it can dry,
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and in the meantime, I
have one already made here.
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So once again, there's
your earth in the middle.
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The top part of the marble
is well above the CD.
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That very, very smooth bottom part,
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it doesn't look like there's
a lot of marble there,
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but that's okay, it's gonna spin.
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And there's your little satellite,
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you're little orbiting moon.
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These tops work really well,
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you wanna wait for the
glue to dry completely,
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but I'm gonna spin this top.
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So there is your moon orbiting the earth.
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Of course it's not to perfect
size, but that's okay.
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And even as it slows down--
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Now of course, it doesn't spin--
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You can spin this top super,
super fast if you want
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and it stays going for a long time,
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because that smooth bottom of the marble
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against the table top,
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it doesn't have very much friction.
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And that just means that there's not a lot
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that's really making it stop
and start, stop and start.
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It's really smooth as it spins around.
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Oh, and it slows down.
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It's pretty easy to spin too.
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So there you have the moon
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orbiting her best friend, the earth.
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And they're always in it together.
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(upbeat music)
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We have read our book,
we've done our activity,
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so now it's time for some poems.
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I looked up moon poems and I found two
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that I really liked.
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But I couldn't tell who the author
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of either of these two poems was.
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That's okay, I'm gonna read them anyway.
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The first one is called, "Moon".
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Are you lonely, Moon?
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You giant white balloon.
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You have no water, wind, or air,
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no wonder nothing lives up there.
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You can't grow trees,
or flowers, or grass,
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your soil is only rocks and glass.
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Even your light is not your own.
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Instead, it's from the sun that's shone.
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Your gravity is weak, I hear.
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You really have no atmosphere.
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But don't be sad, Moon,
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please, don't cry.
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For I still love you, in the sky.
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Okay, let me read the other one.
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This one is called, "The Moon Game".
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And again, I don't know
the author of this poem,
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but it's about the different
phases of the moon.
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"The Moon Game".
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I'm the moon and I play a game.
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I don't always look the same.
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Sometimes, I'm round, a silver sphere.
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Sometimes, just half
of me seems to be here.
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Sometimes, I'm a crescent,
shaped like a smile.
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Sometimes, I surprise
you and hide for a while.
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Look up in the sky for my friendly light.
[00:18:52.01]
What shape will I have
when you see me tonight?
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(upbeat music)
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