Friday, March 14, 2014

Solar System in Your Pocket


Purpose: To demonstrate the distances between the planets in our solar system.

Materials
For each model:
• 1 meter length of cash register tape
• 10 round stickers: five large and five small (Use textured stickers if you are doing this activity for people who are blind or visually impaired.)
• pencil or marker (If possible, make Braille labels with sticky tape, using short-hand for names of planets.)

Procedure: First, guess where you think the planets are in relation to each other on the tape, marking the spaces with pencil. Then, flip the tape over and follow the steps below.

1. Place a sticker on each end of the tape, one large and one small, right at the edge. Label the large one Sun and the small one Pluto.
2. Fold the tape in half, crease it, unfold and lay flat. Place a large sticker at the half-way
point. Label the sticker Uranus.
3. Fold the tape back in half, then in half again. Unfold and lay flat. Place large stickers at the quarter mark and 3/4 marks and
label as Saturn (closer to the Sun) and Neptune (closer to Pluto).
4. Fold back into quarters, then in half one more time. This will give you eighths. Unfold
and lay flat again. Place a large sticker for Jupiter at the 1/8 mark (between the Sun and
Saturn), and label.
5. There is no need to fold the whole thing up again, because the 4 gas giants and Pluto are all on the tape already. For the remaining terrestrial planets, you’ll only need 1/2 of the first 1/8th! That’s the inner 1/16th of your meter. Fold the Sun out to meet Jupiter to mark the 1/16th spot. A planet does not go here, but the Asteroid Belt does.
6. Fold the remaining 1/16th in half and crease at the 1/32nd spot. Place a small
sticker for the Earth just inside this fold (between the Sun and Asteroid Belt) and a small
sticker for Mars just outside the fold (closer to the Asteroid Belt) and label them.
7. Place small stickers for Mercury and Venus, between the Earth and Sun, dividing the space into 1/3rds and label them as Mercury closest to the Sun and Venus
closest to the Earth.


Here are some thoughts from an Astronomy Club leader about the effects of this project:

2014-02-26
"After last week and the demonstration of a pocket solar system, I had my astronomy club members make one. Their placement of the planets was,for a couple of the younger students, way off from the correct location. None of them had all planets located correctly, though they were in the right order. The folding and placement of the planets went well, and the discussion of the large spaces between planets was questioned( my students do that a lot). So, they then researched distances to the planets and decided that maybe the tape placement was correct. They used their chromebooks-an awesome way to get kids to research in the classroom(gives them confidence to investigate on their own). They did division problems using the distance to each planet divided by distance to Earth(their decision) to see if it was 'twice' as far, or how many times as far-so spaced like the tape. I listened and learned as they decided themselves that the tape was pretty accurate. They were surprised that the first four planets were as close as the tape and divisions showed.--cool!"
--Kathleen Roper
Hoyleton Astronomy Club
Hoyleton Public School Dist 29
Hoyleton IL, 

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