Today after lunch we put on our walking shoes and warm coats, and headed off for Neptune. No space shuttle was required because we shrunk the whole solar system down to a more manageable size.
The Sun’s actual diameter is 1,391,980 km, but for this demonstration we used a 20cm playground ball. In the video it is very hard to see Mercury, Mars, and Pluto because they are all being represented by the head of a pin.
Our walk helped us to imagine just how enormous our solar system actually is!
Wow, I loved doing this very lesson when I was small and I still smile when I see it. Our solar system is huge. Two facts I like are that light travels faster than anything in the universe, it’s a bit like a speed limit. Light takes just about 8 minutes to travel from the sun to the earth. I like the fact that the sun is 99% of the matter (stuff that you can touch) of the solar system. I also like that you only ever see one side of the moon. one of my modern day heroes is Prof Brian Cox. You may have seen him on telly. This link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKSDp8xdgoQ&feature=related shows him doing what you were doing on your video. He then shows what happens beyond Neptune! You might find other Brian Cox links on you tube, he does some splendid things about The Sun.
How high do you think the sky is?
Mr E
Hawes
Dear Mrs. Watson and 2/3’s,
Your video was amazing! That must’ve been a long walk! Nehderi learned that the sun is very, very, far away from Jupiter. She thought it was very cool because she never knew the sun was that far away. You have also insipred her to learn more about the solar system.
Aiden was surprised by how far you walked. Brianna though it was creative to use rocks and things from the ground to represent the planets. Taylor’s favorite part was “pretty much the whole thing!”
Thanks for sharing your learning with us,
The 2/3 Techie Kids
Dear 2/3 Techie Kids,
It was great to see a comment on our blog from you today! It was a pretty long walk. We left the school at about 12:50 and we got back at 1:30. We had to stop every now and then to talk about each planet though.
We would love to hear any cool facts that Nehderi learns about the solar system.
Brianna, the rocks were actually there to hild down the cards. It was a really windy day and the objects representing each planet were so small that they would blow away.
We thought you might be interested in what objects we used:
Sun-20cm ball
Mercury and Mars- pin head
Earth and Venus-peppercorn
Jupiter-Medium pompom
Saturn-slightly smaller pompom
Uranus and Neptune-coffee bean
We’re so glad you liked the video!
Your friends,
Mrs. W and the 2/3s
I loved your video! The solar-system is really big! My favorite planet is Neptune.
LilaF
Marin Country Day School (mcds.org)
Marin, CA
5th Grade
Dear Lila,
Thank you so much for visiting our blog and for leaving us a comment. Learning about the different planets is so much fun. We have trouble picking a favourite planet because there are so many cool facts about each of them. We hope you will visit our blog again!
Mrs. W and the 2/3s
Nice work on our solar system, for sure!
I was wondering if any of you ever felt like you were having a slow, pokey sort of day? Things seem to be standing still?
You might like to know that along with the earth you are zooming (that’s right – zooming!) around the sun at 100 000 kilometres per hour. I can’t even imagine what kind of speeding ticket that could get you!
I hope you have some discussions about what the fastest thing known is. That’s really exciting too – it’s even faster than the earth spinning around the sun!
Good stuff.
Karin’s Grandma (aka The Graminator)
Dear Graminator (We love the name!),
Thank you so much for leaving us such a marvelous and informative comment. We think that you must love science as much as we do!
When we read your comment this morning everyone could relate to the type of slow and pokey type of day you referred too. Some of us were even having that kind of day after so much Halloween excitement on Monday.
It is hard to believe just how fast we are zooming around in space. We laughed at the thought of the speeding ticket we would get!
We haven’t talked about the fastest thing known yet, but your comment certainly made us want to do some investigating.
Do you have a favourite planet or object in space?
The Grade 2/3inators 🙂
Last night (Tuesday, around 9:30pm) an asteroid know as 2005 YU55 passed the earth inside the moon’s orbit. It crossed the moon’s orbit in two places.
CBC’s website has an excellent diagram of this in their Science and Technology section.
In terms of space, the pass was extremely close to us.
Very exciting.
The Graminator
Dear Graminator,
Thank you for pointing us in the direction of the animated diagram. We were having a lot of trouble with the internet at the school that day, but we managed to get the sire loaded up (it took forever). Many of the students had talked about the asteroid at home or heard about it on the news. The diagram was really helpful!
Science rocks!
Mrs. W and the 2/3s
Dear mrs.watson,
It looked like you had fun doing that
From Merissa