What causes the phases of the moon

When the moon reflects light from the sun, it reflects that light to earth. When it does this it looks like it glows. The Sun's rays bounce off of the moon and gives us some light at night. However, the sun doesn't light up the whole entire moon. It lights up half of it but not all of it. The moon is locked into place thanks to earths gravity. It still orbits earth but rotates in sink with earth. This explains why we always see the same side of the moon. When we see the moon as a crescent or gibbous or any other phase, it is just the sun lighting it up. The reason we see the moon as crescents and other phases, except the full moon, is because we only see part of the light up area on the moon. During a full moon, we see almost the entire part of the moon that is light up. Other times we see only part of the light up side. During a new moon, however, we don't see hardly any of the light up side of the moon.

Next you will see all 8 phases of the moon...