GIMNASIO FEMENINO

AREA: INTEGRATED SCIENCES

GRADE: 5TH.
TEACHER: OLGA L. PERDOMO /CÉSAR CORTÉS
GUIDE Nº1 THEME: SOLAR SYSTEM SCALE I TERM
Código: MCAF-011 Versión: 01 Fecha de actualización: 08/02/2018

STUDENT’S NAME: _____________________________________________________________ Date: _____________ Grade: ______

The Solar System in your

House

Background
A solar system is a group of planets and other space material orbiting (going around) a star. In our
solar system, that star is better known as the Sun and the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The scale of our solar system is difficult to imagine when we are standing on what appears to be a
large planet looking at an apparently small Sun. Pictures don’t help much. Although we could print the
planet sizes to scale, the paper would need to be way too large to show the scaled distances. Instead,
to help you understand the sizes and distances of our solar system, we’ve created a scale model 1.

1 http://solar-center.stanford.edu/activities/Scale-Model/Scale-Model-Instructions.pdf

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 GIMNASIO FEMENINO
AREA: INTEGRATED SCIENCES
GRADE: 5TH.
TEACHER: OLGA L. PERDOMO /CÉSAR CORTÉS
GUIDE Nº1 THEME: SOLAR SYSTEM SCALE I TERM
Código: MCAF-011 Versión: 01 Fecha de actualización: 08/02/2018

Materials
● Roll of toilet paper

● Markers

● Ruler

Procedure
1. Look in your house for the largest space that you can use to make this experience.

2. Estimate the measure in meters of the space chosen in the previous step. This measure is in a
right line as shown in the image below. Hint: a very big step is approximately 1 meter.

Example

Length of the largest space in some part of the house

3. Record your estimation in the following table

Estimated length of the space in meters

4. Cut a piece of toilet paper equal to the length of the space chosen.

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 GIMNASIO FEMENINO
AREA: INTEGRATED SCIENCES
GRADE: 5TH.
TEACHER: OLGA L. PERDOMO /CÉSAR CORTÉS
GUIDE Nº1 THEME: SOLAR SYSTEM SCALE I TERM
Código: MCAF-011 Versión: 01 Fecha de actualización: 08/02/2018

5. Draw and label the Sun on one end of the toilet paper and Neptune on the other, using colored
pencils or markers.

6. Take a guess! Fill in the remaining objects of our solar system in the space between the Sun
and Neptune, paying attention to the relative distances between the objects. You have drawn
all the planets of our solar system.
7. Now it is time to calculate the actual distances of the planets from the sun. For this, you are
going to use a solar system calculator. Watch this short video to understand how the
calculator works: VIDEO.
8. Using another color, draw again the planets according to the distances obtained with the solar
system calculator.
9. take a picture of some piece of your solar system. And paste it here.

Discussion
Answer the following questions in the space provided.

What surprised you about your guess versus the actual scale of the solar system?

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 GIMNASIO FEMENINO
AREA: INTEGRATED SCIENCES
GRADE: 5TH.
TEACHER: OLGA L. PERDOMO /CÉSAR CORTÉS
GUIDE Nº1 THEME: SOLAR SYSTEM SCALE I TERM
Código: MCAF-011 Versión: 01 Fecha de actualización: 08/02/2018

We split our solar system into two groups: the inner and outer planets. Discuss how these are
broken down and where, in you model, that split begins.

Aside from inner and outer planets, we have another name for these groups, based on their physical
properties. What do you know about the makeup of inner planets versus outer planets that could be
used to distinguish them.

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