Mercury Activities
The lessons below are teacher-favorite lessons focused on Mercury. For more search options or to search by other science target, missions and other criteria, visit our Fast Lesson Finder. You can also search by curriculum standards on our popular Curriculum Standards Quilts.
Mercury Lessons:
Alka-Seltzer Rockets
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon
Short Description: Using baking soda and vinegar, propel an object across the floor to introduce the idea of how things move through space.
Analyzing Elemental Abundances
Grade Level: 9-12
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud
Mission: Genesis (Our Solar System)
Short Description: Participants will practice and understand the use of ratios in describing the abundances of isotopes.
Cooling with Sunshades
Topic: Light and Spectra
Grade Level: 9-12
Body: Mercury
Mission: MESSENGER (Mercury)
Short Description: Participants understand the MESSENGER spacecraft's cooling system through modeling a simple device to measure the effectiveness of different shielding materials against sunlight.
Design Challenge: How do you keep things from getting too hot?
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: K-4
Body: Mercury
Mission: MESSENGER (Mercury)
Short Description: Part of the "Staying Cool" education unit which investigates how MESSENGER can study Mercury without being damaged by the harsh high-temperature, high-radiation environment; in this activity, students design, build and test a model of MESSENGER and a sunshade.
Make a Mission
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Mercury
Short Description: Design your own cosmic bridges, as you build a spacecraft to explore the planet Mercury.
Mars Pathfinder: Egg Drop and Landing
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon, Pluto
Mission: Mars Pathfinder (Mars)
Short Description: Design, build, and test a system for landing on the surface of Mars without breaking the cargo, an egg.
Measuring Solar Activity
Topic: Light and Spectra
Grade Level: 9-12
Body: Our Solar System, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud
Short Description: Measuring Solar Activity is a multi-part exercise in math and physics for high school students and above. Students will learn graphing, pattern recognition by looking at satellite images and 250 years worth of data, making predictions, and recognizing spacial relationships.
Modeling the Solar System
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon
Short Description: This PDF contains four lessons:
1) Modeling Orbits in the Solar System. This lesson models the orbital distances between the planets and shows that the solar system is mostly empty space.
2) Modeling Sizes of Planets. This lesson compares the relative sizes of the planets to those of familiar fruits and vegetables. It also uses size to calculate density and planet composition.
3) Looking Inside Planets. This lesson involves modeling the interior structures of the planets and shows that the solid cores of the gas giants are similar in size to the Earth or Venus.
4) Search for A Habitable Planet. This lesson looks at the characteristics of planets that make them livable, their temperature, and compositions of atmosphere and surface instead of size
or orbit.
Mud Splat Craters
Topic: Planetary Surface Processes
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon, Pluto
Short Description: Observe crater formation in mud to introduce the idea of fluidized craters as seen on the surface of Mars.
Sensing the Invisible
Topic: Light and Spectra
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Mercury
Mission: MESSENGER (Mercury)
Short Description: Participants experiment with infrared sensing and discover that there is a radiation other than visible light arriving from the sun.
Size and Shape Imaged
Topic: Life
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon
Short Description: This activity contains a series of images of very small things. Students will view the images, hear the information from a script, and make some observations and connections. They will see Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) images of small living organisms and rock surfaces. Then, using their new perspective, they will view unidentified samples and speculate about the surfaces and the origins of the features in the images. The goal is to get the students to think about looking at very small objects and to realize
that observations are a great way to start scientific research.
Snow Goggles and Limiting Sunlight
Topic: Light and Spectra
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Mercury
Mission: MESSENGER (Mercury)
Short Description: Participants will build snow goggles similar to those used by the Inuit peoples. By studying ancient solutions to the problem of excessive sunlight on human vision, we can better understand the process of designing the solar panels on the MESSENGER spacecraft.
Solar System Exploration Mission Timeline Activity
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Our Solar System, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Meteors & Meteorites, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Dwarf Planets, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon, Europa
Mission: ARTEMIS (Earth's Moon), Cassini (Saturn), Dawn (Dwarf Planets), DSN (Our Solar System), GRAIL (Earth's Moon), Hubble (Beyond Our Solar System), Huygens (Saturn), IBEX (Our Solar System), InSight (Mars), Juno (Jupiter), Lunar Recon Orbiter (Earth's Moon), MESSENGER (Mercury), NEAR Shoemaker (Asteroids), New Horizons (Dwarf Planets), Phoenix (Mars), Stardust (Comets), Venus Express (Venus), Viking 01 (Mars), Viking 02 (Mars), Voyager 1 (Our Solar System), Voyager 2 (Our Solar System)
Short Description: Extreme Exploration -- Solar System Exploration Missions Timeline involves students in the wide range of mission events of 2008-2015+. Using the Solar System Exploration Timeline poster as a guide, student teams research assigned missions and record events such as launch and landing, etc. It is expected that students will be drawn into the excitement of mission events as they follow along with NASA's Solar System Exploration -- past, current, and future.
Space Math: Ice on Mercury?
Topic: Math
Grade Level: 9-12
Body: Mercury
Mission: MESSENGER (Mercury)
Short Description: Since the 1990's, radio astronomers have mapped Mercury. An outstanding curiosity is that in the polar regions, some craters appear to have "anomalous reflectivity" in the shadowed areas of these craters. One interpretation is that this is caused by sub-surface ice. In this activity, students will measure the surface areas of these potential ice deposits and calculate the volume of water that they imply.
Space Math: The Transit of Mercury
Topic: Math
Grade Level: 9-12
Body: Sun, Mercury
Mission: Heliophysics (Sun)
Short Description: As seen from Earth, the planet Mercury occasionally passes across the face of the sun; an event that astronomers call a transit. From images taken by the Hinode satellite, students will create a model of the solar disk to the same scale as the image, and calculate the distance to the sun.
Stopped Dead in Its Tracks
Topic: Life
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Mercury
Short Description: Participants consider what scientists look for when searching for traces of extinct life on another planet.
Through the Eyes of Scientists Grades 4-6: Volcanoes - They're Everywhere!
Topic: Landforms
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Earth's Moon
Mission: Cassini (Saturn), Galileo (Jupiter)
Short Description: Learn about volcanoes on Earth and in the solar system through the eyes of Scientist Dr. Rosaly Lopes.This lesson is part of the Through the Eyes of Scientists formal education product, and includes materials for students in grades 4-6.
Through the Eyes of Scientists, Grades 4-6: Volcanoes - Theyr'e Everywhere!
Topic: Landforms
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Our Solar System, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter
Mission: Cassini (Saturn), Galileo (Jupiter)
Short Description: Learn about volcanoes on Earth and in the solar system through the eyes of Scientist Dr. Rosaly Lopes.This lesson is part of the Through the Eyes of Scientists formal education product, and includes materials for students in grades 4-6.
Through the Eyes of Scientists: Around and Around - Everything is Moving
Grade Level: K-4
Body: Our Solar System, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon
Mission: Voyager 1 (Our Solar System), Voyager 2 (Our Solar System)
Short Description: Learning about the ever-moving objects in our solar system through the eyes of Scientist-Adventurer, Dr. Edward Stone. This lesson is part of the Through the Eyes of Scientists formal education product.
Through the Eyes of Scientists: Space Can Be a Chilly Place - Ice Is Nice!
Grade Level: K-4
Body: Our Solar System, Mercury, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon
Mission: Cassini (Saturn)
Short Description: Learning about ice in the solar system through the eyes of Scientist-Arctic Space Explorer, Mr. Ben Holt. This lesson is part of the Through the Eyes of Scientists formal education product.
Through the Eyes of Scientists: What is a Planet?
Grade Level: K-4
Body: Our Solar System, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon
Short Description: Learning about the Sun and the planets as a "treasure map" through the eyes of Scientist-Treasure Hunter, Dr. Phil Chamberlin.
Transit Math
Topic: Math
Grade Level: 5-8, 9-12
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon
Short Description: The introduction clearly explains the apparent "collisions," eclipses, transits, and occultations. The collection includes problems on synodic periods, planetary conjunctions, geometry, fractions, linear equations, and probability. The Table of Contents clearly separates middle school level problems from high school problems.
