While there are many stars twinkling in the night sky, there may be a couple of lights in the sky that shine steadily. These are planets, and their light does not twinkle because they are much nearer to the Earth and are reflecting much stronger light from the nearby Sun, just like mirrors in the sky.
Hattie and Brea wanted to know how planets form, so here is an activity where they build their own planets. We used a melon and pieces of modelling clay to find out.
When a star forms, a disc of gas and dust swirls around it, and eventually the dust crashes together to form ever bigger pieces of rock until you get a rocky planet.
I made a model of a star and its disc of dust from a melon and many small pieces of modelling clay.
The girls then crashed the pieces of dust together to make “rocks”, which got bigger and bigger until they had each formed a planet and placed it around the “Sun”.
They have made a simple planetary system.
The gas in the disc collects to form planets too. In our Solar System they form planets called gas giants, which we will model next time.
