Your Weight on Other Worlds
Students follow a 100-pound student across the solar system to see how weight changes with a world's mass and radius while mass stays the same.
Grades 5-8About 15 minutes of narrated flight, plus discussion stops7 stops
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What students will see and do
Students fly from Earth to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto and the Sun, reading an imaginary scale at each stop while Aetherion explains why the number changes. The class pauses at the Moon, Saturn and the Sun to discuss inertia, the role of a planet's size, and the difference between mass and weight.
Learning objectives
- Distinguish between mass (amount of matter) and weight (the force of gravity on that matter).
- Explain that surface gravity depends on both a world's mass and the distance from its center to the surface.
- Calculate a person's weight on another world by multiplying Earth weight by that world's gravity ratio.
- Describe at least two effects of low or high gravity on the human body or on spacecraft design.
NGSS connections
| MS-PS2-4 | Students use evidence from seven worlds to argue that gravitational interactions depend on the masses of the objects and the distance between their centers. |
|---|---|
| MS-ESS1-3 | Students analyze data on the masses, sizes and surface gravity of solar system bodies to compare their properties. |
| MS-ETS1-1 | The final question asks students to define design criteria for a long-term space base under different gravity conditions. |
Stops on this journey
- Weight Versus Mass
- Bouncing on the Moon (discussion stop)
- Mars and Its Surprise Twin
- Heavy on Jupiter
- Saturn, the Gentle Giant (discussion stop)
- Featherweight on Pluto
- Crushed at the Sun (discussion stop)
Vocabulary
- mass
- weight
- gravity
- surface gravity
- inertia
- density
- escape speed
- force