Tiffany’s Travel Through the Milky Way Solar System

Gravity

Tiffany loved looking up at the sky at night to see the stars. She wanted more than anything to go up there and explore. However, gravity was a force that just kept pulling her to the ground.

Wile Coyote learned the hard way that gravity is force that pulls you down and does not allow you to walk on air.

Scientists have found that rocket ships are one way to defy gravity. For your first activity, lets divide into two groups and create a model rocket to defy gravity and help Tiffany get off the ground.

Defying Gravity

Group One Rocket Design Group Two Rocket Design

Tiffany will be using group ones design because it went two feet higher in the air than group two’s.

Atmosphere

Gravity not only keeps us held to the ground, but it also causes planets to orbit the Sun and the Moon to orbit Earth. Just getting off the ground is not enough.

Now that Tiffany has a rocket that she can blast off in, what next? Well for starters, she has to go through the Earth’s atmosphere before she can get into outer space. This is a visible layer of gas that surrounds the earth.

Can you see the layer of gas in this picture? For our next activity, we will be doing an experiment to demonstrate how an atmosphere is created.

Atmosphere Experiment

This experiment requires several pillows, ideally the same in size, shape and thickness. Set one pillow on a flat surface and measure its height. Stack another pillow on top of it and measure the two together. Repeat this for several pillows, recording each combined height. Once you finish stacking, measure the height of the bottom pillow and note how much it has compressed. An atmosphere works in a similar way. Think of the atmosphere as the pillow on the bottom and the core of the earth as the pillow on the top. Just like the pillow on the top, the earth’s core has a stronger gravity to it pulling it.

Gravity has reduced the size of the bottom pillows, but the pillows on top have not changed

The earth’s atmosphere is not as effected by gravity as the earth’s core is

Orbit

• Once Tiffany got through the earth’s atmosphere, she was able to orbit around the sun by following the same path that the earth takes. That is, she did a circle around the sun.

For our next project, let’s figure out how long it took Tiffany to orbit the sun.

This picture shows the Earth going

around the sun in March, June,

September and December. How

long do you think it took Tiffany to orbit

the sun one time.

Planets

• After orbiting the sun for one full year, Tiffany ventured out to see the rest of the planets. Did you know that each planets orbit around a star the same way that earth orbits our sun? What star does the other planets around us orbit? Let’s watch a short video to find out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8aBZZnv6y8&feature=player_detailpage. As a class, let’s create a model of our planets orbiting the sun. Divide into nine groups, determine what your planet looks like and how long it takes to orbit the sun. We will make the model in class together.

Planets Orbiting the Sun

Mercury- 88 daysVenus- 224.7 daysEarth- 365.256366 daysMars - 686.971 daysJupiter - 4,331.572 daysSaturn -10,832.327 daysUranus-30,799.095 daysNeptune-60,190 days

Outer Space

Once Tiffany discovered that it would take 30,799.095days to orbit Uranus alone, she decided the trip around the sun in one earth year of 365 was enough. She began venturing out to see what else in outer space. She discovered that some planets had moons. Unlike the sun, each planet does not share the same moons. There are also asteroids and stars out there. Can each of you figure out which is which in this picture?

Solar System

Tiffany has been on a very long travel. She has found ways to defy gravity, get past earth’s atmosphere, travel an earth’s orbit around the sun, discover information about planets, see stars asteroids and moons. At the end of all of this, she floated above the milky way galaxy. That is the galaxy that we live in. All of the traveling Tiffany has done is a part of our galaxy. It has been a long journey for her, and she is ready to return home to earth. Can you create in your journal the steps that she needs to take to get back home?

Traveling Home

1) Travel back through the asteroids, moons, and stars

2) Go back past each of the outer planets towards the inner planets

3) She can probably skip the earth’s orbit around the sun if she is in hurry to get home

4) Make it through earth’s atmosphere

5) Let gravity do its job to pull her back to earth

Welcome Home Tiffany