Block 1: Phenomenon Launch: What Makes a Planet Habitable?
Side-by-side images: Earth, Mars, Venus, and a recently discovered exoplanet (TRAPPIST-1e) all rendered as round planets. No labels.
Task: Which of these could support life? How would you decide? What do you need to know that you don't?
Open Four Planets, No Labels; that page IS this bell ringer.
Answer in your Field Notebook, dated.
I can list at least 5 factors that might affect whether a planet supports life.
I can explain where the elements you are made of were built, and which kind of star built them.
"Communicate scientific ideas about the way stars, over their life cycle, produce elements."
Where this runs:
- U1 B1: Phenomenon Launch: What Makes a Planet Habitable? ← you are here
Assessed:
Goldilocks Report: the criteria that depend on a planet having heavy elements at all (K/U, Component 1 locks U1 Block 7)
On track looks like:
You can say why the early universe had only hydrogen and helium, what fusion built afterwards, and why iron is where fusion stops paying.
I can check an AI's answer against real sources and decide: use it, fix it, or bin it.
In brief: "Evaluate whether an AI output should be accepted, revised, or rejected (paraphrased; full framework at ailiteracyframework.org)"
Where this runs:
- U0 B1: Welcome + How We Work
- U0 B2: OPVL Across Source Types
- U0 B3: AI as a Source + Documentation Protocol
- U0 B4: Source Dossier Launch + Choosing Your Topic
- U0 B5: Source Dossier Work Day 2: AI Source + Documentation
- U1 B1: Phenomenon Launch: What Makes a Planet Habitable? ← you are here
- U1 B3: Mars as Calibration: What Does Earth Have That Mars Doesn't?
- U1 B5: Exoplanet Detection: Transits and What They Tell Us
- U1 B6: Reading Exoplanet Data Cards: Choosing Your Planet
- U1 B7: Habitability Framework: Building the Comparison
- U2 B3: Rivers as Landscape Sculptors
- U2 B6: Field Photo / Map Analysis Work Day
- U2 B7: Reading the Landscape: Worked Example + OPVL
- U4 B5: IPCC AR6 Deep Dive + Chennai Climate Brief Assigned
- U4 B6: Climate Models: How They Work, How They're Wrong, How to Read Them
Assessed:
Every AI Documentation Template: the 'one thing the AI got wrong' field
On track looks like:
You catch specific errors ('it said 2024; the report says 2023'), and you've stopped writing 'AI can hallucinate.'
What today is about
The question that drives the whole unit: What does a planet need to support life?
Today we open Unit 1 by zooming all the way out. Before we define habitability, before we name conditions, before we touch any vocabulary, we look. Four planets, no labels. You decide which could support life and how you'd know.
Carry-forward from Unit 0: remember Lovelock (1965) from Unit 0 Blocks 2 + 3, the paper that proposed detecting life by reading a planet's atmosphere for chemical disequilibrium? Meeting it again here isn't a coincidence. "How would we recognize life elsewhere?" is the same question as "what makes a planet habitable?", asked from the other side. The modern follow-up you previewed, Thompson et al. (2022), is literally about TRAPPIST-1e, one of the planets in today's image set. Today's launch isn't a new framework; it's the same OPVL muscle you built in U0, applied to a new question. You'll work with new sources this unit (NASA archive entries, peer-reviewed astronomy papers, AI explanations of habitability), and Lovelock + Thompson return when you build your habitability framework. Every U1 source gets OPVL'd the same way you OPVL'd Lovelock in U0.
The point of today isn't to be right. It's to surface what you already believe, and the gaps in what you know. Whatever five factors you list at the end of class become the seed of the framework you'll build, test, and defend over the next ten blocks.
By Block 10 you'll deliver the Goldilocks Report: a structured comparison of Earth, Mars, and a chosen exoplanet against your own habitability criteria, defended to peers playing a NASA evaluation committee. That's where this question goes. Today is where it starts.
Before you start the work
Start with the Four Planets gallery: it is today's phenomenon. The Read is the assessment you are building toward, and the carry-forward is the Unit 0 paper this connects to. Notes go in your Class Notebook as a Power outline.
Taking notes? Power 1 seeds for today
Today's work: looking before naming
Whole-class activity. No choice board today; we work this together so everyone's first list of factors is shared evidence we can build on in Block 2.
Open your Class Notebook and type today's entry header as Heading 2:
A: Sep 3 | U1 B1 | What Makes a Planet HabitableB: Sep 2 | U1 B1 | What Makes a Planet Habitable
What you're submitting today
Exit ticket: formative. Not graded against the rubric today; this is the K/U vocabulary we'll keep building all unit.
Name at least 5 factors that might affect whether a planet supports life, and one thing you want to learn in this unit. Bullet list is fine.
Submit via Google Classroom (link posted in August)One question before you leave
Three to five minutes. Your answer is saved to your reflection journal, where you can read back everything you have written this year.
No grade. Save it; we'll come back to your "now I think…" sentence in Block 10 and see how it changed.
Today's reflection is in Google Classroom, under Reflection Journal.
Link posted in AugustSign in with your school account. Your teacher can see what you write here.