Question

Using the material you can find in your house, prepare a model of the solar system.

Answer 1

Materials needed: One big yellow ball (or an orange) for the Sun, eight small balls or clay/cotton balls of different sizes for the planets, a big cardboard sheet or chart paper, sketch pens or paints, glue, scissors, long sticks (skewers) or thread.

How to make the model:

1. Paint the biggest ball yellow and keep it in the centre. This is the Sun, the star at the centre of the solar system.
2. Take eight smaller balls of different sizes and paint them like the planets:
   • Mercury – smallest ball, grey in colour.
   • Venus – pale yellow (the brightest planet).
   • Earth – blue and green.
   • Mars – red (the Red Planet).
   • Jupiter – the largest ball, orange-brown with bands (the largest planet).
   • Saturn – pale yellow, with a ring cut from cardboard or a bangle fixed around it.
   • Uranus – pale blue-green.
   • Neptune – deep blue.
3. Draw curved orbits on the cardboard sheet with a sketch pen and fix the Sun at the centre.
4. Stick or hang the planets on their orbits in the correct order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
5. Sprinkle small dots, sand or tiny beads between Mars and Jupiter to show the asteroid belt.
6. You may tie threads to each planet and hang them from a stick or hanger so that the planets appear to revolve around the Sun.

Your model of the solar system is ready! Keep the Sun the biggest, Jupiter the next biggest and Mercury the smallest, so that the model looks like the real solar system.