Do you know the order of the planets? Today you are going to be making your own planet mobile that you can hang up in your room so you can see the planets every day!
One way that I like to remember the order of the planets is with this rhyme. My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming The first letter of each of the words of the rhyme in the first letter of a planet. Like this Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Neptune This is the order of the planets from closest to the sun (Mercury) to furthest away (Neptune).
Here is how to make your mobile.
Find the two smallest cardboard circles. These will be the two smallest planets – Mercury and Mars – the two M planets! Cut yourself a piece of thread, roughly the same size as the length from the end of your middle finger to your wrist.
Thread the thread through the hole in one of the small wheels and then tie the two ends together so it makes a loop. Like this. Don’t worry if your thread is a bit shorter – it doesn’t matter!
Next find the Mercury and Mars stickers – they are the two smallest ones and you should have two copies of each. They look like this.
Take one copy of the Mars sticker (the red planet) and stick it on the front of your cardboard circle – covering the hole that the thread is through. Take the other copy of the Mars sticker and stick it on the back of your cardboard circle – again covering the hole that the thread is through. It should look like this.
Next, do exactly the same with Mercury – cut a piece of thread the same length as before, thread it through the other small wheel, tie the ends together and then stick the Mercury sticker on the front and the back.
You are going to be doing the same thing for all eight planets. The medium sized planets are Earth and Venus. They will go on the medium sized cardboard circles and they look like this.
Once you’ve done the small and medium planets it’s onto the four gas giants – Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus and Saturn. These are big planets which are made up mostly of gases such as hydrogen and helium. They look like this.
Do exactly the same thing with these until you have eight planets on strings.
Saturn is a bit special because it has a ring all around it. Take your pipe cleaner and use it to make a ring around Saturn like this.
Next, take your planets and hang them onto your sticks – you should put the first four planets on the first stick in order (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) and then the next four on the next stick (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune).
You can either keep the sticks separate or stick them together. Then use another piece of string to hang your mobile up. Like this!
The big bang theory
Get your white balloon and either a permanent marker (like a sharpie) or a biro pen.
Follow this video to see how you can use your balloon to demonstrate the big bang!
Hold the balloon in front of you and turn it slowly. This is like the moon. The moon is a big ball and the white part of the balloon is the part of the moon that has light on it (from the sun). The dark part of the balloon is the part of the moon that the sun isn’t shining on.
As the moon turns you should see all these different phases.
