Task: Develop a scale to help your classmates make sense of the size of planets or the distances they are from one another. |
Do you know how far away the Sun is from us here on planet Earth?
The sun is 149,597,870,700 meters away from Earth or 92,955,807 miles! It can be a challenge to make sense of things on a scale of millions of miles or billions of meters. For this reason, scientists often use comparisons between objects and distances we can see, touch, or imagine here on Earth to help us make sense of the sizes of planets or the distances between planets. As an example: If the Earth was a tennis ball, the moon would be the size of a marble. |
Extension
Consider researching additional planetary statistics including the size of our solar system, neighboring solar systems, size of our galaxy, and the distances between other planetary bodies.