Introduction to the Solar System
Notes for teachers
Here's a nice little activity for grade 9 science students. It focuses on the following
concepts:
- significant figures
- scientific notation (3-significant figures and exponential notation (base 10))
- the concepts of time (seconds per minute, minutes per hour, seconds per day etc. )
- the scale-dimensions of the solar system
- relationships between time, distance, and velocity
- choosing the appropriate units to describe intervals of time
- elementary dimensional analysis
Instructions for students
Complete the attached chart by calculating how long it would take to travel from the Earth to the
solar system bodies in the chart (in the left column),traveling at the speeds indicated (in the
top row).
Express your answers in
- scientific notation
- in the largest appropriate units