How do you make a solar system at home?

Answer 1

It's going to be difficult to make an actual model. The problem is sizes and dimensions. The Sun is 400 times further away from the Earth than the Moon is, and it has about 110 times the diameter of the Earth (which is itself around 4 times the diameter of the Moon), so if your "Sun" is an ordinary light bulb, your "Earth" is going to be very small and your "Moon" is going to be almost invisibly tiny. Also, the Moon is separated from Earth by a little over 30 times the Earth's diameter, and remember the Sun is 400 times further away than that.

That said, you could cheat a little on the scales. Get an R-type bulb (which gives off a more directional light, as if it had come from further away), a styrofoam ball for Earth, and another one around a quarter that size for the Moon. Mount the bulb as far as you can conveniently get it from the "Earth", and adjust the location of the "moon" so that it casts the proper kind of shadow (that is: there should be a dark spot in the middle, and a lighter grey shadow around it). The accompanying poster should explain that the model is not to scale for the reasons stated in the first paragraph (you'd need a light bulb the size of a car on the other side of the gym if you wanted to get the scale right).

Answer 2

You can draw a planet's orbit with an ordinary pair of compasses, because the planets orbits are nearly circular. Look up the size of the orbits on the internet and where it gives the radius in millions of kilometres, you can call that millimetres. You would need a large sheet of paper for the outer planets.

Answer 3

A rotating, 3D, sort-of-accurate representation of the solar system is called an "orrery". There are working orreries for sale online, and there are kits that can be purchased. Some schematics are available online.

Because of the complex mathematics describing elliptical orbits and the difficulties in simulating these using round gears, a good orrery can be a both expensive and complicated task. Which doesn't mean it isn't worth doing!

Answer 4

I think you would like to construct what is called an orrery. See the links. WikiAnswers and Answers.com do not make any claims regarding the quality or accuracy of any items at any of these links.

Answer 5

You could make it on a PowerPoint and reaserch different things regarding Earth,Space and Beyond. Or you could use different sized balls to represent planets.

______

I have no idea what level/grade you are in, or what degree of information or technical accuracy is required. But if you are in grade school, if you have a gym floor or other LARGE floor available, and your teacher approves, this might be informative, and a LOT of fun. It will take a great deal of work. Don't do it without a lot of planning, or it will be a complete dud. I've never done this, but I don't see why it would not work, at least for most of the planets in our system. Make sure several of you bring cameras.

You can find a lot of information at many sites about the relative sizes of the orbits in the solar system. Work it out as accurately as you can what the general orbits of the planets would look like, with Neptune farthest out. The orbit of Neptune would be the largest circle that you can make on the gym floor. You are going for the general effect, not for astronomical accuracy.

Maybe you already see where this is going. Find a spot near the floor's center that will be the sun, and mark it with masking tape or another method approved by the school that will not cause permanent damage. Mark the orbits of the planets in a similar way. You have to decide if you want to include moons-- you can't mark their orbits on the floor, though.

This will not be easy. Calculate how many earth orbits it takes to equal one full planet-year for each of the planets. In other words, how many earth years long is a year on ___? If, for example, a planet's year is 50 earth years long, then put 50 year markers on that planet's orbit, as evenly spaced as you can manage. Do that for the planets you can fit onto the floor. The planets inside of earth's orbit will orbit more quickly than earth, so you'll have to figure a way to indicate this.

Then have your classmates decide who is going to be the sun, standing on the sun's spot, and who will be each of the planets. On your cue, or the teacher's, tell the 'planets' to make one earth year go by. Then another, and another. The earth student will go around her/his orbit once for each year. Neptune will barely move. See if you can make it through a year for one of the outer planets-- Mars won't be hard, but it will get tougher if you want to get through a year on Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus or Neptune. Forget about Pluto. Its year is something like 428 earth years long. Students can change planets from time to time, since the ones closest to the sun will be spinning/running a lot.

If you want to include the moon, have a bigger student as earth, and a smaller one as the moon; have them hold a rope between them. As the moon goes around the earth, the earth should feel the need to pull back a little to compensate for the moon's tug. This is what the planets and binary star systems experience too! They don't deliberately pull back, but they move in an orbit (both of them) around each other! You could also 'demonstrate' solar and lunar eclipses, and even the transit of Venus actoss the face of the sun. Maybe this is all way too silly, but if I were in school I'd love to do this with my classmates. Best of luck.

Answer 6

To make a simple solar system model at home, you can use different-sized balls or beads to represent the planets, and place them at varying distances from a central light source to represent the Sun. You can hang the planets from a mobile or arrange them on a poster board. Add labels to each planet for identification.

Answer 7

you can take a thermocol board and can use half cut balls as planets and thread as orbit..

Answer 8

You can it foam balls and paint them and then get a card board box and get sticks and tape and to the top of the box and then make sure the box is blue or black on the back of the box.......