How Big is Jupiter?

We are STILL working on our Astronomy course that we started last May.  That's ok! I knew it would be a slower-than-usual year with new baby.  This science class has been so fun!  The projects and experiments have been really engaging and educational.

Today we finished up chapter nine about Jupiter by demonstrating just how big it is compared to the other planets.  Inf act, Jupiter is SO BIG that all the other planets can fit inside of it.

We showed this by making scale models of the planets with play-doh.  Then we squished all the planets EXCEPT Jupiter into one ball, and compared it to the in-tact Jupiter. As explained, the Jupiter ball still had a larger diameter than all the other planets put together!  This was a great visual for helping us understand the size of planets in relation to each other.  It was funny to see just how tiny of a speck Pluto is!

We didn't have enough of any one color of play-doh to make Jupiter, so it is bi-colored, as is Saturn.

                                     

Can you see Pluto at the top of the picture?  So tiny!

      If you'd like to replicate this activity at home, here's the scale we used in centimeters

Mercury	Venus	Earth	Mars	Jupiter	Saturn	Uranus	Neptune	Pluto
.38	.95	1.0	.53	11.21	9.46	4.01	3.88	.18