Description
Background
Why a planet like Venus only visible during the evening or early morning and not at midnight from most parts of the earth? This question has been posed to teachers and students alike. Though this is not exactly a difficult question to answer if teachers & students approach the problem in a systematic way by understanding the position of the planet in the solar system and considering its rotation and revolution, but for many years more than 90% students and teachers we encountered have been unable to grasp this idea and reach to a proper answer. This can be explained on board and cleared, but we came up with an effective paper activity which was later turned into a hard acrylic model that had a tremendous success rate not only explaining the venue problem but also helping in understanding the terms/concepts of “greatest eastern & western elongation, superior & inferior conjunction, opposition, eastern, western quadrature, and retrograde motion.
Purpose
I wish to do a proper workshop where all participants will make the paper activity, and while doing this, they can clearly understand the concepts/terms (Most will be astronomers/astronomy educators, so they will know the concepts) and use this "working paper model" as an activity to teach their students in different areas and countries. This will help in the exchange of many ideas and may lead to newer activities and designs in the future and can be included as part of the astronomy syllabus.
Note: This activity is ready and tested from our side with teachers and students in workshops we conduct at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), so this can be directly used as part of the astronomy syllabus.
If I could get an advanced idea about the number of participants, I will bring the activity material from India. This is a paper activity, and we have one made of acrylic for demonstration purposes.
