Investigating the moon

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By Jo and John Graham — Learning Unlimited, educational consultants and writers

Every child knows something about the Moon but learning just a little more about it provides a good opportunity to develop scientific enquiry and thinking skills

The Moon is the brightest object in the sky and has thousands of features which have been mapped and named. There are craters made by meteorites hitting the surface, rifts and rilles and huge, dark, waterless plains called ‘seas’. Even viewed through low-power binoculars the Moon has a stark, alien beauty. There is a theory that the Moon was formed from debris caused by a collision between the Earth and a large object. The Moon is about a quarter of the size of the Earth, gravity is much weaker and there is no air. The Moon has no atmosphere, weather or water to wear away its surface, so the fine-grained soil that we know is on the surface of the Moon has remained unchanged for billions of years.