Week 7

 This week in lab we discussed and compared the different planet sizes. Within our table groups, we each made an accurately scaled model of the solar system. Below are our scaled numbers. 

We decided to scale down to 350 millimeters. It was very interesting to see how our scale compared to other table groups. Some groups stretched much farther across Lindquist than ours did.  I think the most difficult part of scaling our solar system was creating our planets to be the correct size, as they were very small. 

In the press book this week, we first read about the size and distance between each planet. We also watched a short video comparing the planets across campus, which was pretty cool to imagine. We lastly read about why Pluto is no longer considered a planet in our solar system. Although it meets two of the requirements to be a planet, orbiting the sun, and having had gravity form a round-shaped planet, Pluto failed to meet the final requirement of "clearing the neighborhood." This means that Pluto failed to either attract or eject other smaller bodies from its region of space. 

In lecture we continued learning about our moon and solar system. We started by looking at the formative assessment we took during out lab section. We started by discussing what phase of the moon we would see when walking in certain directions, at given points in time. Next we discussed more on the moon. We learned that the moon rotates, but on earth we can only view one side. We also learned that the moon is slowly moving farther and farther from Earth. Lastly we discusses the moons formation, and how it goes through its phases.