Week 7: Our Solar System

1. What did you do in lab today?

    Today in lab, we talked about the scale of our whole solar system, and created a to scale model of it. This model was a lot bigger than I expected it to be, which also goes along with what we learned about the size of the solar system and how everything is a lot farther apart and bigger than we can even imagine. For our model we used playdoh to represent the planets, and the whole length of it was more than 50 meters!

2. What was the big question?

    How big is our solar system?

3. What did you learn in Thursday's discussion?

     In discussion today we talked more about moon phases and what the moon might be at when the sun is in a certain position. We also talked about the lines on the Earth and where we are positioned in comparison to them can effect where our shadow points. 

Textbook Chapter 5

1. What did you learn?

     Something I learned from this chapter was that Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet because it does not meet all three requirements that something needs to have in order to be a planet. The one it does not meet is that it does not "clear the neighborhood". This means that Pluto does not have gravitational dominance in its orbit in space. 

2. What was most helpful?

     What was the most helpful was the picture of all of the planets and their sizes next to each other. This just really helped to put their actual size into perspective. 

3. What do you need more information on?

     Something that I think I need more information on or maybe just something I am more interested in is the gravitational dominance that planets have. I am just curious how all of the planets differ in that aspect. 

1. What questions, concerns, and/or comments do you have?

    I do not have any!