The document summarizes a chapter about investigating a mystery object on Mars using scientific argumentation. It discusses how scientists make claims and support them with evidence. Students analyzed images of Mars and considered two claims about a mysterious object: that it was a jelly donut or a rock. By examining additional evidence images, they determined the rock claim was better supported and most scientists agree with that conclusion. The process of gathering multiple lines of evidence and revising conclusions is key to scientific argumentation.

1. GEOLOGY ON MARS
Unit 1 - Chapter 1-3
1.3: Investigating a Mystery Object on Mars
Comparing Earth
and Rocky Planets

2. 1. What ideas do you have about what happened to the
puddle?
2. What information would you need to collect in order to
be more confident about what happened to the puddle?

3. SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTATION
• Scientists use argumentation
to find the best explanation
for a question about the
natural world.
• Scientists ask questions
about the natural world
based on their observations,
just as Claire did when she
observed that the puddle
disappeared.

4. There are many different questions a scientist could ask about the natural world

5. SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTATION
• When scientists think they have an idea about how
something works, they make an argument to support
that idea and their thinking.
• Scientific argumentation is the way that scientists
communicate, evaluate, and revise their explanations
about the natural world.
• In your warm-up you began to create an argument.
• We will continue to utilize scientific argumentation to
find the best answer to the chapter question:
What geologic process could have
formed the channel on Mars?
• Today, we will learn more about the practices
scientists use when participating in argumentation.

6. HOW DO YOU USE
ARGUMENTATION?
• How do you use argumentation in your
everyday lives.
• To convince my parents to let me do something.
• To convince a friend that I am right about
something.
• Your everyday argumentation skills will be very
useful when we use scientific argumentation.

7. • Scientists can collect
information from many
different places.
• from a computer program,
• directly from the environment,
• from a laboratory.
• from satellites or spacecraft (like
in the case of the channel we are
studying).
• Scientists use information as
evidence to make a claim.
• Scientists use the information
they gather as evidence to help
answer their question.
• This proposed answer is called a
claim.

9. AVISUAL
REPRESENTATION

10. Claim: a proposed answer to a question about the natural world
Evidence: information about the natural world that is used to
support or go against (refute) a claim
Reasoning: the process of making clear how your evidence
supports your claim

11. Share what you think might
have happened to the puddle
now.
Based on the new evidence, we
can make the claim that the
water evaporated into the air.

13. Let’s use evidence to make an argument about a mysterious object on Mars.
This evidence includes NASA images of the surface of Mars.
Opportunity Rover

14. Mysterious
Object
In the path of Opportunity, a rover exploring the surface of Mars
Many scientists and people from across the world
were curious about this weird object that
Opportunity found.
How did it get there? What was it?
Many people thought it looked like a jelly donut
and started calling it that.

15. After making observations and gathering information
scientists created 2 claims about the object

17. 6 MINUTES

18. Let’s Share your Ideas
What do you think about these claims, based on the first set of
evidence?
• Which evidence supports Claim 1?
• Which evidence supports Claim 2?
Explain how your evidence supports one or the other claim.

19. Jelly Donut Evidence Cards: Set 2
• On these cards, you will find new
information that the instruments
on Opportunity collected about
the object.
• This additional information might
help you determine which claim
is better supported.

20. 6 MINUTES

21. • Which claim do you think was best
supported by the available evidence?
• Which claim do you feel most confident
about? Why?
• Did your thinking about the claims change
after you looked at the new evidence? If so,
what made your thinking change?
• How did our understanding of Earth help us
learn about this object on Mars?
What do you think about these claims, based
on the SECOND set of evidence?
Explain how your
evidence
supports one or
the other claim.

22. Which Claim is Better Supported?
• In this activity, you practiced using information as
evidence to support a claim.
• You also worked to make your reasoning process clear to
others.
• Claim 1 is better supported by the evidence presented,
and is the claim that most scientists agree with.
•Remember evidence can support or go against a claim and
that convincing arguments are supported by evidence.

23. Clip your cards back together.
Clip together Set 1 with 1 paper clip.
• the Jelly Donut Question and
• Claim Cards and
• Set 1 - Jelly Donut Evidence Cards
Clip together Set 2 with the other paper clip.
• Set 2 - Jelly Donut Evidence Cards

24. How does our understanding of Earth help us learn
about other rocky planets?
You used evidence about Earth, such as information about fungi, in order to
support a claim about the jelly donut mystery on Mars.

25. Remember your job for the Universal
Space Agency;
• Investigate the mysterious channel
on Mars.
• To use scientific argumentation to
make a claim as to the channels
geologic formation.

26. In the previous lesson, we
began gathering information
about geologic processes that
form channels on Earth.
Now, we will think about how this
information can help us identify
possible claims about the
formation of the channel on
Mars.

27. • Reminder: we looked at evidence from aerial images of flowing
lava and flowing water on Earth.
• Both flowing water and flowing lava change the shape of the
land.

28. Landform similarities on Earth and Mars
provide evidence about how the channel on
Mars was formed.
Which claim do think is stronger so far?
Who is unsure at this point?”

29. Additional evidence is needed to identify
which claim is stronger.
• We have seen evidence from aerial images
of Earth for what landforms are formed by
flowing water and flowing lava. Based on
these images, there is support for both
claims.
• Some of you already have ideas about which
claim is stronger. Some of you are unsure.

30. Additional evidence is needed to identify
which claim is stronger.
• Gathering more evidence is an important
part of the argumentation process.
• New evidence can help us be more sure
about our claims or even cause us to change
our claims.
• We will continue to gather more evidence
about what geologic process formed the
channel on Mars, just as real scientists
would.

31. 1.1 Vocabulary
•habitable,
•rocky planet
•system
1.2 Vocabulary
•channel,
•geologic process
•landform
1.3 Vocabulary
•claim,
•evidence
•reasoning

32. 1.3.4: (Activity 4)
You will apply your current understanding of planetary geology to
the question of what geologic process formed the channel on
Mars.