The Sun, our Earth, and the Moon

When we stand on the edge of the sea we tend to look out to the horizon, under our feet and up to the sky.  We are thinking about our place in space, maybe this can be described as, we are feeling our place in space/Space.

It is very dificult to try to convey some sense of scale of the Universe to children, the activity was a way of laying some groundwork.

I derived the activity in Seashore Explorer from a scale which reduced the Sun to 300mm diameter, where the  Earth would be 3mm 121 feet away and the Moon a dot (www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical).  Another scale would be to imagine the Earth as a basketball, the Moon as a tennis ball and the Sun a large house 3 kilometres away (Prinja 2018).

A couple of resourses if your children have an interest in this is a series of short clips by Professor Brian Cox on the BBC website one of which can be accessed below;

The Science Museum Plaentarium books written by Raman Prinja and beautifully illustrated by Chris Wormell are fab too.  There is a large book, a smaller junior version and an activity book in the series.