Access Prior Knowledge Lesson 3: What are comets and asteroids?

1. Access Prior Knowledge Lesson 3: What are comets and asteroids? Opening Activity Open Science textbook to page 552. Open Science workbook to page 171A to review homelearning. Open Science folder to review vocabulary words and outline for the chapter. Open Science journal and answer the following question: 1. How are the inner and outer planets different? Review Content Cards and Q-Cards in bin, sharing with partners quizzing each other 
quietly. Log in to clickers using student ID number. Be ready to review home learning when timer goes off. Don't forget to write your 
home learning in your 
agenda page 172A.

2. Do you agree with the statement? 1 Comets are the same size as planets. Yes No

3. Do you agree with the statement? 2 Asteroids can be hundreds of kilometers wide or as small as a pebble. Yes No

4. Do you agree with the statement? 3 Shooting stars are actually meteors. Yes No

5. Do you agree with the statement? 4 Most asteroids hit Earth. Yes No

6. Comets A comet is a frozen mass of ice and dust that orbit the Sun. They are much smaller than planets and come from areas beyond Pluto. Every year, several comets travel into the solar system moving in very long, 
oval paths and only a few are large enough to be seen without a telescope just 
before sunrise. A comet has three main parts: -Nucleus: This is the center of a comet. It is very small and made of dust 
and ice and exists when the comet is close or far from the Sun. -Coma: The coma is a huge cloud of dust and evaporated gases that 
surround the nucleus. It forms when the comet gets close to the Sun. The 
Sun melts the nucleus and the coma makes the comet look bright and fuzzy. -Tails: A comet has two long tails. The ion tail is made of gases and glows. 
Ion tails are thin and blue. The dust tail is made of dust that comes from the 
nucleus as it melts. A dust tail is wide and yellow. First paragraph pg. 552

7. Asteroids Unlike a comet, an asteroid is a rocky mass that orbits the 
Sun. Asteroids are smaller than planets; sometimes they are 
called minor planets. Unlike comets, most asteroids orbit in the asteroid belt, an 
area between Mars and Jupiter.  -Jupiter’s gravity is what holds the asteroids in the 
asteroid belt. First paragraph pg. 554

8. Meteors, Meteoroids and Meteorites Meteoroids are small asteroids and can be the size of a very large 
rock but most are the size of pebbles or grains of sand. Shooting stars are not really stars; they are meteors and form when 
a meteoroid hits the Earth’s atmosphere. The meteoroid heats up quickly and gets so hot that it glows as a 
streak of light. Very bright meteors are called fireballs. Most meteors burn up before they hit Earth’s surface, but some 
meteors do not burn up completely and may fall to Earth. A meteorite is a piece of a meteor that lands on Earth and most are 
small. The largest known meteorite fell in Africa and weighed 60 tons. Asteroids First paragraph pg. 555 Comets

9. MatchQuest Asteroid Meteors Comet

10. TextQuest Answer questions in your Science Journal. 1. List the different parts of a comet. 2. Which part of the comet exists when it gets close to the sun and when it is far away from the sun? 3. What are "shooting stars"? 4. How are comets and asteroids different? Don't forget to write your 
home learning in your 
agenda page 172A.