Science Education Standards:

Short Description: Animators build cartoons by flipping through a series of images over time. Make a flipbook using Vesta images to help you picture the asteroid spinning on its axis in orbit through space!

(1)

Your Mission: Make a Vesta Flipbook!

Here you go ...

• Print out the images of Vesta (1.) (black and white is fine -- the original images were also black and white)

• Cut the 20 images of Vesta along the lines with care (2.)

• Order the images 1 to 20 and place in a neat stack (3.)

(2)

Question: What do you think the other numbers are associated with each image? Think geometry ...

• Staple one end of your flipbook (Does it matter which end?)

• Flip your book and that of your friend (4.)

• What do you observe?

(3)

1. What strategies help you observe Vesta best?
   
   
   • Observing more closely or further away?
   
   
   • From a certain angle?
   
   
   • Other?
   
   
2. Discuss as a team where you believe Vesta's axis of rotation is. In other words, if Vesta were whirling around an imaginary pole, like a top spins, like the Earth does about the North and South Poles, where would that pole be located?
   
   
   • Sketch possible axes (axes = the plural of axis -- your group has more than one idea? Sketch more than one axis) of rotation on your first Vesta image.
   
   

   (4)

3. If you had a chance to make your flipbook again, what would help?
   
   
   • Who in your group gets the primo flipbook prize -- more importantly why?
   
   
4. Brainstorm as a team: how might this compare to the ways that scientists develop techniques to make sense of data?
   
   
5. Visit http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/videos.asp to see other animations of Vesta using the same images you worked with.
   
   
   • Try the one on the top right, called "Animation of Vesta" first -- it will look very familiar!

Click this image for a larger view of a the printable page. (The image sheet is also accessible on the second page of the downloadable PDF above.)