Stonius
12-03-2015, 06:35 PM
Hey there,
I thought I'd share a little something that I did that really perked my boys interest in astronomy.
It's very simple. We walked around the solar system. It takes a little planning, but essentially what you do is you make a scale model of the solar system and you walk to where each planet would be and deposit a little biodegradeable model. In order for some of the planets to be visible, you're looking at at least a 4km walk. I'd always wanted to do this myself anyway, just to try and get the scale into my own head, so I thought I'd blow my kids minds while I was at it.
Our walk was circular so we ended up where we started, but you can plan yours how you like. Beforehand I'd made some small spheres out of that paper based sculpting compound you can get at art stores A cheapo set of callipers from a $2 shop helped me size them correctly. For the bigger planets I made paper cutouts. The tricky thing is getting the measurements right, but the following sites make it a breeze http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/
http://thinkzone.wlonk.com/SS/SolarSystemModel.php?obj=Sun&dia=1m&table=y&map=n
Of course, it all depends how long you want to walk for, peoples abilities, preferred routes, etc, so figure that out first in Googlemaps.
So first, I drew a 1m circle at the beginning and told the kids that this was the sun. I then asked them to guess how far away the next planet would be. They took their guesses (about 5m away) and then we paced it out with a pedometer app on my phone. 42m away we found Mercury, and we placed a tiny 3.5mm sphere on the ground.
Then I explained that we were now going to proceed to walk around the solar system ("shouldn't take long" my eldest said). Venus was a mere 78m from the sun, and a more respectable 8.5mm sphere. Similarly, the Earth (9.1mm) at 107mm. I made a tiny moon too - a 2.4mm sphere placed 27cm away from the earth. Mars (4.8mm @ 164m) is reached quite quickly. At this stage it looks like the rest of it will be a doddle. After Mars, there's quite a gap, And the Asteroid belt is kind of diffuse, so to give the kids something to 'wow' at I stopped at 375m and told them that this is where the surface of Betelgeuse would be on the same scale. By the time we hit Jupiter (10cm @ 559m), my eldest son has cottoned on that we still had 4 planets to go (I included Pluto. I like Pluto. Maybe it's not a planet, but I don't hold that against it). That's when my son said "Dad, is this your sneaky way of making us walk around the Tan?"
What could I say? "Yup"
But they were enjoying themselves too much to care. From Saturn (8.4cm, rings inner 9.7cm, outer, 19.8, all at the 1025m mark) its a long way between planets. Uranus, a 3.4cm circle is still another kilometer away at 2,062m, Followed by Neptune (3.3cm) at a lonely 3,232m. Finally after all the gas giants, we deposited a tiny 1.6mm sphere at the 4,248m mark, contemplated how small the sun would look from that distance, then turned down our street to head home.
On this scale we were walking about 5.5 times the speed of light. The same journey at the speed of light would take around 5.5 hours (Pluto being 5.5 light hours from the sun, you see).
Almost cheekily I asked if they'd like to do it all again and they said a unanimous 'YES!' (I was suprised, but they meant 'yes', but on another day). I told them that if we were to turn around and do the same walk 2 and a half times more, we would be at Voyager 1 - both the furthest any man made object has ever traveled from the earth, and until quite recently also the fastest. Picturing that we could 'walk' to the edge of interstellar space in 3 and a half hours, whereas it had taken one of humankind's best efforts 38 years to get there, was humbling.
And that's just the very edge of interstellar space. To actually reach the nearest star we would have had to walk to the Ukraine the long way round (via both the south and north poles).
Needless to say, they weren't keen on walking to the nearest star.
Anyway, I recommend this little experiment to anyone with kids. It's a great way to really get a sense of just how mindbogglingly big space really is.
Cheers
Markus
I thought I'd share a little something that I did that really perked my boys interest in astronomy.
It's very simple. We walked around the solar system. It takes a little planning, but essentially what you do is you make a scale model of the solar system and you walk to where each planet would be and deposit a little biodegradeable model. In order for some of the planets to be visible, you're looking at at least a 4km walk. I'd always wanted to do this myself anyway, just to try and get the scale into my own head, so I thought I'd blow my kids minds while I was at it.
Our walk was circular so we ended up where we started, but you can plan yours how you like. Beforehand I'd made some small spheres out of that paper based sculpting compound you can get at art stores A cheapo set of callipers from a $2 shop helped me size them correctly. For the bigger planets I made paper cutouts. The tricky thing is getting the measurements right, but the following sites make it a breeze http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/
http://thinkzone.wlonk.com/SS/SolarSystemModel.php?obj=Sun&dia=1m&table=y&map=n
Of course, it all depends how long you want to walk for, peoples abilities, preferred routes, etc, so figure that out first in Googlemaps.
So first, I drew a 1m circle at the beginning and told the kids that this was the sun. I then asked them to guess how far away the next planet would be. They took their guesses (about 5m away) and then we paced it out with a pedometer app on my phone. 42m away we found Mercury, and we placed a tiny 3.5mm sphere on the ground.
Then I explained that we were now going to proceed to walk around the solar system ("shouldn't take long" my eldest said). Venus was a mere 78m from the sun, and a more respectable 8.5mm sphere. Similarly, the Earth (9.1mm) at 107mm. I made a tiny moon too - a 2.4mm sphere placed 27cm away from the earth. Mars (4.8mm @ 164m) is reached quite quickly. At this stage it looks like the rest of it will be a doddle. After Mars, there's quite a gap, And the Asteroid belt is kind of diffuse, so to give the kids something to 'wow' at I stopped at 375m and told them that this is where the surface of Betelgeuse would be on the same scale. By the time we hit Jupiter (10cm @ 559m), my eldest son has cottoned on that we still had 4 planets to go (I included Pluto. I like Pluto. Maybe it's not a planet, but I don't hold that against it). That's when my son said "Dad, is this your sneaky way of making us walk around the Tan?"
What could I say? "Yup"
But they were enjoying themselves too much to care. From Saturn (8.4cm, rings inner 9.7cm, outer, 19.8, all at the 1025m mark) its a long way between planets. Uranus, a 3.4cm circle is still another kilometer away at 2,062m, Followed by Neptune (3.3cm) at a lonely 3,232m. Finally after all the gas giants, we deposited a tiny 1.6mm sphere at the 4,248m mark, contemplated how small the sun would look from that distance, then turned down our street to head home.
On this scale we were walking about 5.5 times the speed of light. The same journey at the speed of light would take around 5.5 hours (Pluto being 5.5 light hours from the sun, you see).
Almost cheekily I asked if they'd like to do it all again and they said a unanimous 'YES!' (I was suprised, but they meant 'yes', but on another day). I told them that if we were to turn around and do the same walk 2 and a half times more, we would be at Voyager 1 - both the furthest any man made object has ever traveled from the earth, and until quite recently also the fastest. Picturing that we could 'walk' to the edge of interstellar space in 3 and a half hours, whereas it had taken one of humankind's best efforts 38 years to get there, was humbling.
And that's just the very edge of interstellar space. To actually reach the nearest star we would have had to walk to the Ukraine the long way round (via both the south and north poles).
Needless to say, they weren't keen on walking to the nearest star.
Anyway, I recommend this little experiment to anyone with kids. It's a great way to really get a sense of just how mindbogglingly big space really is.
Cheers
Markus