Year 8 are studying Earth in space. The teacher checks the station's position on NASA's tracker beforehand and times the lesson so it is over the daylit side, then shows the live Earth view on the board for about 15 minutes, with a recorded ISS clip ready in case the feed drops to a loss-of-signal screen, which happens often. As Earth moves past, the teacher points out cloud systems, coastlines, the thin blue band of the atmosphere at the planet's edge and, if the station crosses it during the lesson, the line between day and night. Students note what they see in their books, then use the teacher's figures (the station orbits about 400 km up at roughly 28,000 km/h, once every 90 minutes or so) to work out how many sunrises the crew see each day. The lesson ends with a discussion of how thin the atmosphere looks compared with the size of the planet.
Tools: ISS live video Nine ideas for your own version in Generate
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.