1. Earth’s Natural Satellite
The Moon
Earth’s Natural Satellite

2. Individual prediction
How many moons can fit inside the Earth? (Volume) Make your estimates.

3. Size of the Moon Compared to Earth group Prediction
Roll Play-Doh into a solid ball.
Divided the ball in half.
Take one half to make 2 spheres which estimate the size of the earth and the moon.
Place these on a sheet of paper and mark EARTH and MOON (also place these the distance that your believe they are away from one another)
Keep these here, this is your prediction.

4. Actual Size of the Moon
Take the other half of the Play-Doh, roll it out into a hot- dog
Cut this into 5 equal pieces
Cut each of the pieces into 10 equal pieces
Now, you should have 50 approximately equal sizes pieces
Choose 1 of the 50 that represent an average sized piece
This represents the moon
Roll the remaining 49 pieces together
This represents the Earth

5. Moon & Earth
With a bit less than four times the diameter of the Moon, the Earth has approximately 49 times the volume of the Moon.

6. Take out calculator

7. Distance FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
The Earth has a circumference of approximately 25,000 miles.
What is the diameter? (Hint: C=(pi)d)
The moon is approximately 30 Earth diameters away. How many miles is that?
How can we use the circumference of the Earth and the distance from the moon to the Earth to create a scale model using the play-doh? The basketball and softball?
Circumference of a circle = C = pi(d)
Circumference of Earth = 25,000mi.
Diameter = 25,000/3.14 = 8,000mi.
The moon is 30 Earth diameters = 30*8,000mi = 240,000mi. This is almost 10x the circumference of the Earth.
So, if you wrap a string around the basketball 10x, you can model the distance between the Earth and Moon.
The space shuttle orbits at 250mi above the surface of the Earth (1cm on string from the Earth side)