Lesson Plan: The Big Bang and the Fate of the Universe Physics
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to describe the theories for how the universe began and the different eventualities of the universe.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- recall the most and least common elements in the universe,
- recall that the big bang was the instance at which all matter and energy in the universe began to move away from a single point,
- recall the order of key cosmological events: the big bang, the formation of the Sun, and the formation of Earth,
- recall two of the main possible fates of the universe: the big crunch and the big rip,
- recall that the fate the universe will have depends on the density of energy and matter in the universe,
- recall that the objects further out in galaxies have been observed to orbit the center of the galaxy much faster than is predicted and dark matter has been proposed as an explanation for this,
- recall that the expansion of the universe has been observed to not be constant and dark energy has been proposed as an explanation for this,
- recall that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a background of radiation that was emitted shortly after the big bang,
- recall that the CMB provides evidence for the universe being in a much hotter, and therefore a denser, state in the distant past.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- the basic structures of the solar system and the universe,
- what stars, planets, and galaxies are.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- the heat death of the universe,
- the false vacuum,
- the cosmological constant,
- anything from general relativity,
- the very early universe (the first few seconds/minutes).
