We suggest students work in pairs. Homeschool students can work on their own, but will need a stack of books or something similar to elevate their flashlight a few inches off the ground for their brightness tests.

Prepare Stickers

Cut enough label stickers so that each pair of students will have 11 half stickers. You can also use 11 pieces of tape.

Prepare to Darken the Room

The brightness of your classroom can significantly affect student answers on their brightness test worksheet. It’s important to get your room as dark as possible while still having enough light for students to read their worksheets and move around safely. We suggest testing the brightness of your classroom before students arrive!

Make Sure You Have Enough Space

Each model Solar System extends about 3 meters (10 feet) so each pair of students will need this amount of space. If you don’t have enough floor space, a few student desks pushed together should work just fine! Students will also need enough space to walk along the side of their model Solar System for their brightness tests.

If you don’t have enough space, you can adapt the model to omit Neptune. Simply leave the strips of paper H, I, J, and K unattached. This will create a model that is 2 meters (6 feet) long. Be sure to discuss with students that Neptune is missing from their model. Have students predict how bright the Sun would appear from Neptune using their other observations.

Teacher Background

During the brightness test, students may notice that the circle of light shining from “the Sun” (flashlight) onto their Test Rover worksheet gets bigger the farther away they move away from it.This happens because light spreads out as it travels from its source. A larger circle of light on their worksheet does not mean that the Sun is brighter. It means that the Sun’s light is spreading out, which makes it dimmer.

We suggest students work in pairs. If possible, we recommend pairing students of similar heights together. This way, when the students remove the sticky notes from the wall, they should be able to easily reach them. Homeschool students can work on their own.

Decide Where Students Will Jump

Each pair of students needs a blank space (a wall or cabinet) where they can place their sticky notes and measure their jump height. If you have enough space in the classroom this is ideal, but you can also do this in the hallway.

Set up Planet and Moon Exploration Stations Before Class

We suggest printing out two sets of the Planet and Moon Exploration Stations so that a maximum of 4 students are at each station at a time (given a class of 32 students). Each student will only need to visit 4 stations. We suggest placing one set of these stations at opposite ends of the classroom or one station on desk clusters of 4 so that students have the most room to spread out.

Teacher Science Background

We have rounded numbers to simplify the gravitational differences between Earth and other planets and moons. If you or your students are curious, the exact amounts of gravitational pull and how they compare to Earth are listed here:

• Earth | 9.81 m/s2
• Moon | 1.62 m/s2 | 5.98 times less gravity than Earth
• Jupiter | 24.79 m/s2 | 2.55 times more gravity than Earth
• Mars | 3.71 m/s2 | 2.61 times less gravity than Earth
• Titan | 1.35 m/s2 | 7.18 times less gravity than Earth
• Triton | 0.78 m/s2 | 12.43 times less gravity than Earth
• Neptune | 11.15 m/s2 | 1.15 times more gravity than Earth

Even though they are much larger than Earth, both Jupiter and Neptune are gas planets, which means that they have much lower densities. Uranus is much larger than Earth, but because the density is much less in comparison to Earth’s, the gravitational pull of Uranus is actually less than that of Earth.

We suggest students work in pairs. Homeschool students can work on their own, but this activity works best if each student can engage in debate and discussion with at least one other person.

Check Shading on the Worksheets

The Mission Plan worksheets include greyscale shading that indicates the amount of heat and light that emit from each star of the three solar systems. The correct shading is essential for the activity, so we suggest printing out copies of these worksheets beforehand to ensure that everything prints correctly.

Teacher Tips

The solar systems and stars (Malina, Thea, and Helios) used in the activity are fictional, but they were inspired by real scientific discoveries. If you and your students would like to learn more about real stars and exoplanets that astronomers are investigating, there are several resources in our Extensions section for you to explore.