The document is a curriculum guide focused on comets, meteors, and asteroids, outlining standards, competencies, and various educational activities related to these celestial objects. It describes their characteristics, scientific understanding, and cultural beliefs, includes simulations for impact scenarios, and features assessment strategies for students. Additionally, it highlights significant historical comets and provides comparative information between comets, asteroids, and meteors.

1. Comets, Meteors, and Asteroids

2. Curriculum
Guide

3. Content Content Standards Performance
Standards
Learning Competencies
Other members
of the Solar
System
- Comets
- Meteors
- Asteroids
demonstrates
understanding of the
characteristics of
comets, meteors and
asteroids
discusses whether
or not beliefs and
practices about
comets and
meteors have
scientific basis
-compares and contrasts
comets, meteors, and
asteroids
- predicts the appearance
of comets based on
recorded data of previous
appearances
- explains the regular
occurrence of meteor
showers

4. Module 3. Comets, Asteroids,
and Meteors
Activity 1: What happens when a comet or an
asteroid hits Earth .
Activity 2: Meteoroid, meteor, and meteorite:
How are they related?.
Activity 3: Do superstitions about comets,
asteroids,
and meteors have scientific basis? .

5. Mash Up Songfest!
SKY IS THE LIMIT!
Group students into 5 groups, and assign each group with the songs
stanza telling about the night sky.
Group 1 – Vincent
Group 2 – Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Group 3 – I Swear
Group 4 – Yellow
Group 5 – Wish Upon A Star

6. Are stars the
only objects we
see in the night
sky?

7. Truth or Fiction:
1. What we call a falling star is not really a star!
2. Meteors are bigger than asteroids.
3. Asteroids are also called planetoids.
4. Comets orbit the sun!
5. Meteors are debris of comets and asteroids.
6. Appearance of comets foretells war and famine.
7. Meteorites are bigger than meteors.
8. Comets contain water.

8. Comet
A ball of cosmic
snow, ice, and
dust that comes
from the icy cold
edges of the solar
system and orbits
the Sun.

9. Structure of a Comet
To Sun
Ion Tail
Dust
Tail
Coma

10. Comet Structure
 Nucleus
 10 km “Dirty Snowball”
 Coma
 Cloud of evaporated ices and ions
 may be 100,000 km in diameter
 Tail
 Always points away from Sun
Solar Wind and Radiation Pressure

11. Why can we see a
comet?
We can see comets because it does not encounter enough
friction in space to cause it to heat up and burn. When
the ice turns to vapor (from the Sun melting it), particles of
dust trapped in the ice break free. Radiation streaming
out from the Sun pushes this material away from the comet
in a long tail that always points away from the Sun. These
particles reflect sunlight, and it is this reflected sunlight that
makes the comet visible to us on Earth.

12. If comets have ice
where do you think
they come from?

13. Kuiper Belt (short period comets)

14. The Oort Cloud
(Long Period Cometss)

15. Known Comets

16. Comet Halley

17. Bayeaux Tapestry
Norman Invasion of 1066

18. Comet Halley 1910
•Pope Callixtus III
excommunicated
Halley's Comet in 1456
•In 1910, charlatans sold
"comet pills"
Orbit

19. Comet Nucleus

20. Comet of 1577

21. Hyakutake

22. Hale-Bopp

23. Composition: hydrogen,
carbon & nitrogen compounds
Comet Wild 2
Hale-Bopp

24. Comet West

25. ENRICHMENT:
PHET SIMULATION
My Solar System!

26. Remember December
21,2012?
What made it scary
for some?

27. Asteroid
-small rocky or metallic body that orbits the Sun. Hundreds
of thousands of asteroids exist in the solar system.
-range in size from a few meters to over 500 km (300 mi)
wide.
- generally irregular in shape and often have surfaces
covered with craters.
- like icy comets, asteroids are primitive objects left over
from the time when the planets formed.

29. Asteroids
Apollo
Trojans

30. Some Asteroids

31. Ida - Dactyl

32. Gaspra

33. What asteroid is
considered as a
planetoid or minor
planet?

34. Ceres

35. Sedna

36. What killed the
dinosaurs?

37. Activity 1:
What happens when a
comet or an asteroid hits
Earth?

38. Objectives:
After performing this activity, you should be able to:
1. describe how impact craters are formed when a comet or asteroid
hits Earth based on a simulation; and
2. present observations on simulating a comet or asteroid impact
using drawings.
Materials Needed:
1 rectangular container (aluminum tray or plastic)
1 pebble (1-4 cm in diameter)
colored flour/colored starch
pencil

39. Barringer’s Crater
An iron meteorite 100 feet across and 70,000 tons
slamed into the Earth at about 43,000mph in the
Arizona desert near Flagstaff 40,000 years ago.
Barringer Crater is 4,100 feet wide and 571 feet deep.

40. Other Impact Craters

41. Impacts
!
Barringer
Crater

42. Tunguska, 1908

43. How Much Damage?

44. ENRICHMENT:
PHET SIMULATION
My Solar System!

45. Have you seen a
falling star? What
thing comes to your
mind first whenever
you see it?

46. Meteoroid, Meteor,
Meteorite, Crater

47. Meteoroid
One of the
countless bits of
rock and metal,
smaller than an
asteroid, which
orbits the Sun or
a planet.

48. Meteor
A meteoroid
falling through
a planet’s
atmosphere
and burning
brightly
because of
friction.

49. Meteorite
The part of a
meteor that
crashes into
the surface
of a satellite.

50. Sporadic Meteors
Irons Stony-Irons
Chondrites Carbonaceous
Chondrite
Achondrite

51. What is a
Meteor shower?
When does this
happen?

52. The Cause of Meteor Showers
P55/Tempel-Tuttle

53. Why After Midnight is Best
Rotational
Velocity
Orbital
Velocity
Midnight

54. Shower Radiant

55. The 1833 storm

56. The 1966 storm

57. 1997 Leonids from Orbit

58. Two Showers for Halley

59. Summary
of Similarities and Differences:

60. What’s That Up In The Sky???
COMETS ASTEROIDS METEORS
Made of ice-
have tails
Made of rock
and metal
Made of rock
and metal
Stay in space Stay in space Fall into
Earth’s
atmosphere
Orbit the sun Orbit the sun Gravity pulls to
Earth; they
burn up as
they fall

61. SAMPLE
ASSESSMENT

62. PROCESS/SKILLS:
1. Make a modified Venn Diagram using three overlapping
circles namely Meteor, Asteroid, and Comet.
2. Guessing Game (Hula Bira Game Format) using the following
keywords:
Meteor
Meteorite
Meteoroid
Commet
Tail
Coma
Ceres

63. UNDERSTANDING:
1. A falling star is reportedly seen to hit a ricefield at midnight. A
talk in the town said that doomsday is ahead. As a junior
scientist, how would you prove these talks to be false?
2. Your neighbor found a piece of meteorite and used it as his
amulet. How would you convince him that it is not true that
meteorite will give him a supernatural power? How would you
revere him for the rare find by explaining to him the significance
of collecting meteorite?

64. OUTPUT/PERFORMANCE:
A science magazine is looking for a good article of speculative
fiction to publish in their anniversary issue about Earth’s Asteroid
Collision Aftermath. The article would also vie for the Palanca’s
new literary category: Science/Speculative Fiction.
As a junior science writer write an article following the given
criteria:
Research based speculation …………………… 40%
Scientific Understanding ………………………. 30%
Use of layman’s term to explain ……………….. 30%
100%
Aja! Margaret Atwood !!!

65. Thank you!!!