Introduction

For many years my family lived on the top of a mountain. On summer evenings I liked to slip outside and lay on the trampoline in the backyard. The valley stretched out far below and as the cool mountain breezes washed over me and gently swayed the trampoline, I felt as if I were floating high above the earth. I liked to focus on a nearby mountain peak and watch as the sun dropped behind it; then, the pink and gold light would creep away, leaving a rich darkness. As soon as the darkness set in, the sky filled with a thick swath of stars. The sky seen from an isolated mountain is not like the sky seen from a city, with a few winking stars sprinkled about; instead the entire sky is full of heavenly bodies. If I was patient and laid very still while concentrating on the spot where the mountain and the sky met, I could see stars move, almost imperceptibly, but steadily across the sky. It was awesome to see and feel the magnificence and power of the universe. The universe may seem a distant thing that is unconnected to our lives here on Earth, but the way that the universe is ordered and the way things happen in space have a tremendous impact on us.

In this lesson we are going to examine where we fit in the universe. We will consider how the forces of the universe affect us. The celestial bodies in our solar system have an impact on our ocean tides, seasons, and time zones. In the following lessons we will discuss the effects of other forces of nature: weather and climate, internal forces like earthquakes and volcanoes, and forces that create mountains and deserts.

• Objective 1:  Compare the earth's place in the universe to other celestial bodies.
• Objective 2:  Describe the impact of celestial bodies, such as the sun and the moon, on the earth.
• Objective 3:  Describe the seasons and their causes.
• Objective 4:  Identify time zones and calculate time.
• Objective 5:  Describe earth's spheres.
• Objective 6:  Identify Arkansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee on a map.

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