“Across the Universe” Science Project

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Gather your materials.  You’ll need some twine, a tape measure, planet cutouts, scissors, calculator, and a long hallway, driveway or yard.

You also need to familiarize yourself and your student(s) with the term Astronomical Unit. Basically it’s a unit of measure equal to 92,955,807 miles, or the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

From the lesson plan:

For your conversions, remember 1 meter = 1.094 yard or 39.38 inches. If you are using
yards/inches for your project, you should convert all of your meter measurements into
inches by multiplying. For example, Mercury is .387 m (in scale distance) from the sun,
which is .423 yards (.387 x 1.094) or 15.24 inches (.397 x 39.38).

These will be the distances that you measure out and actually place your planets

Choose an item to represent the sun and place it at one end of your space.

Measure out each planet and place along side your measuring tape

We did this outside, so we placed rocks on the planets so they wouldn’t blow away.

Haley and Travis represent the distance from the Sun to the Asteroid belt in this picture

And there’s Travis aaaaall the way out by Neptune!

Then it started to rain in space, so we collected our things and went inside.

Additional Source: Enchanted Learning’s Planet Page

It is OK to use my photos or content provided a link back and proper crediting is given