Our Planet Walk II
Friday, November 9, 2007
Today our classes finished our planet walk.
We placed our eight-inch Sun over the outside door on the fourth grade hall. Carefully we counted the clicks of our trundle wheel.
The orbit of little Mercury, a pinhead on our scale, would pass through the hall just short of the wall between Mrs. Moore’s room and Mr. Shaw’s room.
Click - click- click... Venus, Earth’s near twin in size (a BB on our scale), would orbit across our hall right through the door to Mrs. Taylor’s room.
More clicks... Our little blur BB, Earth, would revolve about our eight-inch Sun its orbit passing through our hallway about midway through the Exploratorium.
Still more clicks... Mars, another pinhead on our scale, would orbit through the hall about midway between Mrs. Pinson’s door and the workroom.
At this point we were feeling pretty confident that our model would fit within the confines of our hall. Most students guessed that the orbit of Neptune would probably pass through the hall short of the cafeteria.
So we began measuring again... lots of clicks... past the restrooms, past center hall, past the music room, all the way to the first door of the gym! Here is where the orbit of our giant planet Jupiter, a large marble in our scale, would pass. Some children got down on the floor to peer back toward our “Sun”. It looked very small way down at the end of the hall.
Off we went again following our clicking trundle wheel toward the orbit of Saturn, the ringed giant. Uh, oh! We came to the far wall of the cafeteria and still hadn’t counted enough clicks!
So we headed out to the driveway, lined our trundle wheel up with the cafeteria door frame and continued counting clicks... almost to the end of the teacher’s parking area. There would pass the orbit of Saturn, on our scale a small styrofoam ball, about the size of a large grape.
Now on down the drive to Uranus’s orbit. Click, click, click...
OH NO! We reached the gate to the campus! Mr. Shaw left all the students except one to watch through the fence as he and one student counted clicks all the way to the edge of Scenic Road! Still not far enough! What can we do!
Mr.Shaw asked that we imagine that we magically fold the Solar System at that poit. Fold it right back on itself. We started backtracking, still counting clicks. About halfway up the hill we finally reached the sppot where the folded orbit of Uranus would pass. This gas giant would only be a large as a regular marble on our scale.
Click, click, click... all the way back to the cafeteria door. There would pass the folded orbit of frigid, faraway Neptune, the farthest planet... another regular marble on our scale.
If we hadn’t “folded” the Solar System, we’d have put Uranus near Armuchee Creek and Neptune near the Armuchee Post Office.
Now if we wanted to include tiny dwarf planet Pluto, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence on our scale, we would have to put it beyond New Armuchee Baptist Church.
And the most recently found dwarf planet (another period), Eris? Three times as far as Pluto! That tiny period would orbit almost two miles from our eight-inch Sun!
