6 Videos

  • Circumference of Earth

    04:17 duration

    About two thousand years ago, a Greek scholar named Eratosthenes used some sticks, shadows and math to calculate the circumference of the Earth. We enlisted friends in Hawaii and Missouri to help us recreate Eratosthenes’ experiment. In this video you’ll see how we took advantage of Lahaina Noon in order to measure and calculate the size of our home planet.

  • Powers of 10 in Pennies

    02:48 duration

    Writing out very big numbers like -100 billion - 100,000,000,000 - becomes more and more awkward the larger the numbers get. So many zeros, so little time. To avoid writing out all those zeros scientists use a sort of shorthand called the powers of ten. In this video we take the thickness of a penny, and using the powers of ten show how quickly one small penny goes from hanging out in your pocket to the edge of space. 

  • Try This at Home: Power of 10 Viewer

    03:17 duration

    Can’t get enough of the powers of ten? Here’s something you can try in your home. Watch as we use a homemade grid, a meter tape and an object to illustrate how the apparent size of things change as we move away from it. 

  • Solar System in a Bag

    04:40 duration

    In this video we demonstrate how we can learn to appreciate the size of the planets in our solar system. By using different sized seeds we’ll show you how to create a scale model of our solar system that will fit in a typical sandwich sized bag.  
     

  • Toilet Paper Solar Systems

    04:12 duration

    Within our solar system the distances in space are so vast that they can be difficult to imagine. For this demonstration we’ll use a roll of toilet paper to measure out a scale model of the distances of the planets in our solar system.

  • How Far Away is the Moon?

    02:10 duration

    A quick online search will tell you that the Moon is about 238,855 miles away from the Earth. That’s a pretty long way away, but in this episode of STEM in 30 we’re looking at scale models. So we brought in some experts to demonstrate how far apart the Earth and Moon are using a basketball, tennis ball and string.  

How do I use these in my classroom? 

Looking for additional suggestions for how to use these short middle school friendly videos in your classroom. 

Teacher Tips

The Scale of the Universe

Compared to the Sun, how big is the Earth? What is a scale model and how does it help us understand the size of things? Walk you through the size of things that are impossible to measure in inches and feet. 
 

Grade Levels

Grades 6 - 8

Subjects

Physical Science

Math

Sponsor

Boeing, Hexcel, and Safran
 

Rights

You are free to use this resource for educational purposes, with attribution. (CC BY-NC)

Learning Standards

  • NGSS: MS-ESS1-3 Earth's Place in the Universe: Analyze and interpret data to determine scale properties of objects in the solar system.

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STEM in 30

STEM in 30 was an Emmy-nominated program for middle school students produced by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. The team is now producing a new series, On Air.

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