We have been amazed! Recently, we began our science unit on astronomy. Over the past few days, students have been grappling with the size of our solar system, not to mention the magnitude of the universe as well! It's hard to believe, but if the sun is 1 cubic centimeter, Pluto would be over 42 yards away. Now imagine that within that 1 cubic centimeter sun, there are 1,300,000 Earths! That would make Earth pretty tiny, indeed. And yet, we have the ability to conceptualize all of this in our brains. Wow.
Using an algorithm developed at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, students made a scale model of our solar system using toilet paper...over 42 yards of it. A completed model, with that 1 cubic centimeter sun, stretches from the school office door to the school kitchen (when you include Pluto). Working together, students had to calculate the distance between the planets and measure on their toilet paper solar system using metric values to place each planet. Probably more challenging was the fact that students had to engineer a solution to working in the small space of our classroom to create their entire model. Students quickly realized that rolling up what they had completed of their system saved space for everyone.
Now you know why we needed all that toilet paper!
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| Measuring and working among everyone else |
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| Folding to make measuring meters more efficient |
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| Even making it work in really small spaces |
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| Everyone in on the act |
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