Week 7: A Scaled Universe

  

 Week 7: A Scaled Universe

Learning in Lab:

This week during lab we started with the question, if you look into the sky at 12:00pm and see a full moon, why might this be shocking? We drew a diagram of the Earth and positioned the sun and moon to make this statement correct. In my drawing, I drew myself in the Northern Hemisphere and the sun is slightly to the right of my position on the Earth. To make a full moon, the moons orbit would have to be on the southeast side of the Earth to reflect the sunlight to for a full moon. Then, we did a discovery activity where we created a scaled version of the sun and the four closest planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. We used a website to accurately scale the size of the planets diameter and their distance from the sun. It was shocking to see the difference in size of the sun compared to each of the planets. After figuring out our scale, we created planets out of playdoh and measured out 80 meters. Mars was 80 meters away from our sun and the remaining planets were closer. I thought this was a really good representation for young minds to grasp concepts about how big Earth and other planets are relative to the sun, in addition to how far away they are from the sun. 

A Scaled Representation of Mercury 
Compared to the Sun

Learning in Lecture:

Big Questions: 
This week in lecture we reviewed the answers to the two formative assessments that we took during our lab section. We looked more at the moon, how it is relative to the Earth, how it was created, etc. We also discussed another formative question about if you were standing in the Northern Hemisphere and the sun is setting, what phase is the moon in? I enjoy doing these formative questions where we apply our knowledge within the answer. We also discussed the idea of shadows as they relate to the position of the sun, in Iowa our shadow will relatively always point North because of our position on Earth. After discussing the formative assessment questions, we visited different theories of how the moon was created. The capture theory is debunked by Newton's law of motion, an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. The fission theory is debunked because the Earth holds stuff in due to gravity. The co-formation theory is debunked because if they were created at the same time, they would be on the same plane, have the same amount of gravity, and be made of the same material. Finally, the moon was created by colliding with a planet, Theya smashed into the Earth which created its tilt, some of the Earth and Theya were ejected and formed the moon.  

The Website we Utilized to Scale our Universe 

Textbook Connections:

1. What did you learn?
Throughout this chapter I learned more about our solar system. A way to remember the order of the 8 planets would to use the acronym: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nutella. The four inner planets are rocky because their surface is solid, they are smaller in size. The outer four planets are gaseous and they are larger than the rocky planets. I also learned that Pluto is not a planet because it does not meet all three requirements to be a planet: orbit the sun, is round in shape, and "clearing the neighborhood." Therefore Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet. 

2. What was most helpful?
One aspect of the pressbook that was helpful for me was to watch the video to see a size comparison of the planets across Iowa's campus. This is similar to the activity that we did in class to help me conceptualize how large our solar system actually is. 

3. What do you need more information on?
I would like to have more information about what it means to clear the neighborhood when considering planet attributions. I understand that planets have more mass, meaning that they have more gravitational pull, but I do not understand what it means to attract or reject objects in space. 

4. What questions, concerns, or comments to do you have? 
I would like to do a scaling activity in my future classroom to allow students to visualize not only the size of our universe but also the size of planets compared to one another and the sun. 

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