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When I taught astronomy, I found that many students could NOT
understand the diagrams in the book.... They just
couldn't interpret the book illustrations. Besides, it's hard to understand
this when looking at a static page. There are some astonomy Java applets on
the Web, as well as planetarium software, that let students play around with
animations. These work somewhat better than static diagrams, but students
still can't "see" the concept until they work with 3-D models.
It might help to take your globe pencil sharpener and a beach ball,
figure out how far apart they should be according to the scale of the solar
system (based on the globe), set 'em up outside, and THEN point the axis of
the globe toward or away from the "Sun".