If you had $100.00 you could use between all the mass in our solar system, how would you divvy it up? I would say That because the sun is pretty important I would give that half of my budget, so $50.00. For the remaining portion of my budget I would start by taking out $10.00 and dedicating $5.00 to comets, asteroids, meteors, and dust particles, and the other $5.00 to the minor planets. So now spending $10.00 on that and $50.00 on the sun, I have $40.00 left. I would separate the rest of this into the planets. I would give Jupiter $10.00 because it is the biggest planet. Then comes Saturn (next biggest planet) I would give that $9.00. I now have $21.00 left. I'd give Neptune $7.00 which leaves me with $14.00. I have to divide this with the planets that are left, the rocky planets, since we already covered the gas giants. I would give Earth $5.00, Venus $4.00, Mars $3.00 and Mercury $2.00. That would take up the rest of my budget.
After looking where these were actually ranked I was wayyyy off. The sun actually takes up 99.85% of mass, or $99.85 out of our $100.00 budget. For the rest of the plants, starting with the gas giants, Jupiter takes up 10.6% mass or 10.6 cents, Saturn takes up 3.2 cents, Neptune takes up .0006 cents, and Uranus takes up .005 cents. For the rocky planets, Earth and Venus take up .0003 cents, Mars takes up .00004 cents and Mercury takes up .00002 cents of our budget.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
A Private Universe
The Earth is a fascinating and mysterious object. It took a lot of discoveries for us to come to know what we know about it and its axes today. A classic question is "what are the reasons for the seasons?" A lot of people use this play on words in terms of holidays like Christmas, for example "What is the reason for the Christmas season?" Today we are going to talk about it in a more literal sense. We have season on earth because we are on a tilted axes. This tilt causes us to get the season we experience. The earth is always "pointing" (tilted) to one side as it goes around the sun. Sometimes the sun is in the direction that the earth is pointing, but
not at other times. The earth receives indirect light from the sun because of this tilt. What this means is the light is angled when it hits us, it doesn't hit us straight on. This indirect source of sunlight with the tilt of our axes causes the seasons, in other words they are the "reason for the seasons."
Another fascinating part of our planted is our moon. We only have one but our moon goes through different phases. A great question that a student may as is "how are phases of the moon created?" Phases of the moon are created based on where the sun, earth and moon are in correlation to each other. What I mean by this is as the moon rotates, around the earth, it is being illuminated from various angles by the sun. These various angles create the different phases of the moon we see at night throughout the year. For an example, at the new moon phase, the earth is directly between the moon and the sun, that is why it's so dark. Use the diagram below as reference.
Another fascinating part of our planted is our moon. We only have one but our moon goes through different phases. A great question that a student may as is "how are phases of the moon created?" Phases of the moon are created based on where the sun, earth and moon are in correlation to each other. What I mean by this is as the moon rotates, around the earth, it is being illuminated from various angles by the sun. These various angles create the different phases of the moon we see at night throughout the year. For an example, at the new moon phase, the earth is directly between the moon and the sun, that is why it's so dark. Use the diagram below as reference.
Friday, September 11, 2015
Kepler's Three Laws
Kepler has three laws of planetary motion. These three laws were:
1.) "The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci."
2.)"A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time."
3.)"The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi major axis of its orbit."
Below is an image of Kepler's Laws:
An example of Kelper's Laws is listed below in an image, This is very similar to the example we did of Kepler's Third Law which is also below.
In my MSED 252 class we created a table dealing with Kelper's 3rd Law. We created the table below in an excel sheet as an example of these laws.
1.) "The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci."
2.)"A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time."
3.)"The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi major axis of its orbit."
Below is an image of Kepler's Laws:
An example of Kelper's Laws is listed below in an image, This is very similar to the example we did of Kepler's Third Law which is also below.
In my MSED 252 class we created a table dealing with Kelper's 3rd Law. We created the table below in an excel sheet as an example of these laws.
| Planet | Orbital Period (year) | Orbital Period Squared | Distance in AU (Cubed Root of orbital Period Squared) |
| Mercury | 0.24 | 0.06 | 0.39 |
| Venus | 0.62 | 0.38 | 0.73 |
| Earth | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 |
| Mars | 1.88 | 3.53 | 1.52 |
| Jupiter | 11.86 | 140.66 | 5.20 |
| Saturn | 29.46 | 867.89 | 9.54 |
| Uranus | 84.01 | 7057.68 | 19.18 |
| Neptune | 164.80 | 27159.04 | 30.06 |
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