Our planet Earth isn’t the only ball of rock whizzing through space. There are 7 other major planets going around the Sun — and our Moon. It’s a quarter million miles away, which sounds far. But someone figured out that if you lined up all the other planets, they’d fit between Earth and the Moon!
Lace up: What shape are Earth, the Moon, and our planet friends?
Jog: If there are 8 planets and 1 moon in the picture, how many objects is that?
Sprint: Mercury is about 3,000 miles wide, Venus is about 7,000, and Mars is about 4,000. How much of that line-up do those 3 cover together? (Hint: You can add 3 thousand, 7 thousand, and so on as if you were adding 3 apples, 7 apples…)
Hurdle: Jupiter is almost 300,000 miles around at its widest point. How many 3,000-mile-wide Americas could you wrap around Jupiter?
High Jump: If Earth is 8,000 miles wide and Jupiter is 88,000 miles wide, how many times as wide is Jupiter?The sky’s the limit — for real: If you wanted to line up the 4 gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) in the last 4 slots but in some other order, how many other ways could you line them up?
Answers:
Lace up: They are spheres, another word for ball. From the side, they look like circles.
Jog: 9 objects.
Sprint: 14,000 miles, nowhere near the width of the next biggest planet after Earth (Neptune at over 30,000 miles).
Hurdle: 100 of them.
High Jump: 11 times as wide.
