Why do moon have different shapes?why is it that there is half moon?full moon???

Answer 1

it's the earth getting in the way of the moon, we just can't see the whole thing, but it's always physically the same shape.

I'm pretty sure I went over that in elementary school

Answer 2

The moon is always one shape - a sphere (like a big ball).
What we see is the different parts of the sunlit side of the moon. The moon orbits the Earth, and as it moves around the Earth we see the changing angle of the sunlight shining on the sunlit side.
Picture a baseball and a lamp shining on both you and the ball. Hold the baseball and move it around you. As it moves around you, you will see that sometimes its between you and the lamp and you can't see the "lit" side (its pointing away from you). This is what we call a new moon (meaning we can't see the lit side).
Now keep it moving and it will be on the other side of you, with the lamp lighting up the entire side facing you. This is called the full moon, when we see the entire sunlit side of the moon.
Half moons are when the moon is off to the side, forming a triangle with the Earth and the sun, so we can only see half the sunlit side of the moon.

Answer 3

Nicole should go back to elementary school.

It is simply the fact that the sun can only shine on one side of the moon (its a ball, the sun can't shine on all of it)

So, what you see is various amounts of the sunlit part of the moon.

At full moon, the sun is shing full on the half facing us.

At new moon the sun is shining on the half away from us.

When you see a half moon, the sun is shining on the side of the moon.

The crescent moon is when the sun is shining mainly on the reverse side of the moon, but we just have a glimpse of that sunlit part.

It’s as easy as that.

PS - when the moon is a thin crescent, get someone to take you out to a dark place, away from city lights.

Then you will see very dimly the part of the moon that is not sunlit. That is reflected light from the Earth, because the sunlit side of Earth is very bright from space and bright enough to reflect off the moon.

These things were once easy to see, but city lights have ruined the sky for many.

Answer 4

The moon only rotates once as it circles the earth, therefore different portions are exposed to the sun that we can actually see. When the moon is behind the earth, we see a full moon. when the moon is in front of the earth, we see a "new" or no moon.

Answer 5

The Moon is really a sphere. It never changes. But sunlight only shines on one side of it. When you look at it from different angles, you see different parts of the lit up part. Sometimes, when it is a very thin crescent, you can faintly see the dark part too. Then you can see that it is really still a full ball shape.

Answer 6

Its something about the Sun, and the Earth blocking its light in different places.

Answer 7

hey beautiful

th moon is actually the smaeshape.. its a sphere.. but it depends on were the sunlight is and what angle you look at it that it shows you the diff shape....

Answer 8

earth rotates