Blast out of this world in Ms Ulrich’s science class! This awesome event took place September 15, 2009 with Ms Wood’s class and Dr. Reinemann. How bizarre! They used toilet paper! It was the best idea ever because Dr. Reinemann said that toilet paper was an awesome way to measure distances. First they cut out scaled down replicas of the planets from large pieces of paper. They used sheets of toilet paper as a unit of measurement. They used a table chart to know how many sheets of toilet paper to use for the distance of each planet from the Sun. This 3rd grade class learned a lot from this activity because they got to see how the planets are positioned and to see the amount of distance between the eight planets. Oh, and they didn’t forget about poor little Pluto. They included it on the measurement chart even though it is a dwarf planet.
| PLANET | DISTANCE FROM THE SUN | SQUARES OF TOILET PAPER |
| Mercury | 57,910,000 km | 1.0 |
| Venus | 108,200,000 km | 1.8 |
| Earth | 149,600,000 km | 2.5 |
| Mars | 227,940,000 km | 3.8 |
| Ceres (asteroid) | 414,436,363 km | 7.0 |
| Jupiter | 778,330,000 km | 13.2 |
| Saturn | 1,429,400,000 km | 24.2 |
| Uranus | 2,870,990,000 km | 48.6 |
| Neptune | ,4504,000,000 km | 76.3 |
| Pluto | 5,913,520,000 km | 100 |
http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/;copyright 1997, Ron Hipschman, Exploratorium. 17 Oct. 2009
Alice G., Annie G., Julia M., and Jackie P.
Congratulations to all you Chickering Reporters! What a wonderful way to share all the exciting things happening at Chickering School.
The toilet paper measurement lesson on the planets looks very interesting. I’m sure Ms. Wood’s students learned a lot. Kudos to Ms. Ulrich and Dr. Reinemann for making learning FUN! Way to roll:-)
Mrs. Baker
I really liked the title!!! Also I think you used a lot of details so people could understand what students did and learned!
I would make one suggestion, I would try to include where they were building the scaled replica of the solar system.
Nice job!!!