Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Create Your Own Solar System Simulator

Other Objects In The Solar System

How to Make Your Own Solar System in Universe Sandbox

Did you know theres more than just planets in our solar system?A long time ago the solar system was just a bunch of small rocks, dust, and ice. Some of this clumped together to become planets, but a lot of this material is left over. These left overs make up the Asteroid Belt, The Kuiper Belt, and the Oort cloud in our solar system. The Asteroid belt sits between Mars and Jupiter, and out past all the planets is the Kuiper Belt. Its really cold out at the Kuiper belt and theres a lot of ice there! Even farther out 1,000 times further than the Kuiper Belt theres the Oort Cloud, where we think most comets come from. Check out the videos below to learn about these strange places!

Make A Scale Model Of The Solar System And Learn The Real Definition Of Space

  • Fill in the diameter of the Sun you want your model to be scaled by. You can fill in either the red bordered inches box or the green bordered millimeters box. Important: Only fill in one box. If both are filled in you will get a dialog box asking you to clear one of the boxes. Use the Clear button to clear the entire form.
  • Notice that the distances and sizes of the planets will automatically fill in. I’ve also provided some other interesting scale comparisons at the bottom of the chart.
  • You can now build your scale model. You can do this with a long tape measure, or you can measure the size of your pace and walk it off counting the number of steps you take. To mark a planet’s place you can use a piece of paper on a post that you stick into the ground, or you can use a flag, or even a person. Be prepared for a long walk!
  • If you build your solar system on a roll of toilet paper, you can make the Sun about .4 inches across and still fit the entire solar system on the roll. A standard roll of toilet paper has about 450 sheets that are about 4.375 inches long, hence the roll is about 164 feet long. You should check your toilet paper for length. Some are longer.
  • You can click on the names of the planets and satellites to go the the Nine Planets web site page about them. LOTS of info there!
  • in mm

    I’ve only given you the sizes and distances to the planets. If you’d like to see the satellites of the planets as well, for a much more extensive page

    Scale Of The Solar System

    When we talk about the scale of the solar system, there are two things we are referring to: size and distance.

    Filmmakers Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh, with the help of some friends, built a scale model of our Solar System in the dessert.

    And here you can compare the size of planets, stars, and other objects we know about in the Universe.

    Because the sizes of objects and distances between planets and stars are long, astronomers sometimes use AU , whcih is roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun , or the distance light travels in a time period , to describe lengths and distances.

    Experiment and explore! Scroll along on the If the moon were only 1 pixel website to explore how big the solar system is. Take note of the scale being used on this interactive website. You can also explore the scale of the Universe through this web app .

    Also, can you figure out what the diameter of our solar system is in AU?

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    I Create Layered Html Canvas

  • BACKGROUND LAYER CANVAS
  • Used for static graphical elements
  • FOREGROUND LAYER CANVAS
  • Used for moving graphical elements
  • Layered canvases using Z-index

    < HTML> < HEAD> < meta charset="UTF-8"> < /HEAD> < BODY> < !-- CREATE CONTAINER TO HOLD BOTH CANVASES --> < div id="CONTAINER" style="width:350px height:350px position:absolute top:50% left:50% transform:translate "> < !-- BACKGROUND LAYER  --> < canvas id="LAYER_BACKGROUND_T2" width="350" height="350" style="position: absolute  left: 0  top: 0  z-index: 0 "> < /canvas> < !-- FOREGROUND LAYER  --> < canvas id="LAYER_FOREGROUND_T2" width="350" height="350" style="position: absolute  left: 0  top: 0  z-index: 1 "> < /canvas> < /div> < !-- JAVASCRIPT CODE --> < script type="text/javascript" src="T2_createLayeredCanvas.js"> < /script> < /BODY> < /HTML> 

    Adding Your Own Planets

    Build A Solar System Simulator

    Our example solar system has just two planets and one comet, but dont let this limit you! You can add new planets or comets by right clicking on the sprite and clicking duplicate.

    Once youve duplicated the sprite, you can edit the new planets orbit and appearance. You can try and recreate our own solar system, or make your own using your creativity and what youve learned above.

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    Changing How Your Solar System Looks

    One thing you can do with your solar system is change the way it looks. You can choose the way your planets appear you can make them gas giants or icy worlds, or you could make one look just like Earth. Its up to you!

    You can also change the background image. Consider choosing a cool space image from the Hubble collection!

    Play Solar System Switch

    The planets and moons of our solar system come in a wondrous variety of colors and textures. Some appear white, smooth, and calm others are splotchy with color and dotted with craters and volcanoes. If this is the variety to be found in our solar system, imagine the strange worlds that must exist around other stars!

    In spite of how different they look, the Switch-a-Roo game might make you think the Sun, all the planets, and some of their moons were all the same size. Not true!

    There are big planets and little planets, big moons and little moons.

    Earth seems to us like a pretty big place. Well, Jupiter has 317 times more mass than Earth! Saturn is 95 times as massive as Earth. But even with those giants hogging all that mass, the Sun contains 99.86% of the mass of the entire solar system!

    It’s a wonder there’s any matter at all left over for us!

    This picture compares the sizes of the Sun and the planets. If Earth were about 2 millimeters across, as it is in this picture, the Sun would be almost 218 millimeters across!

    This picture compares the sizes of the moons of the different planets and with Earth.

    This guy is all mixed up! Play the game and help him get un-switched.

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    Challenge No3 Build Your Own Solar System

    Tips for using this guide: This guide is meant to be self-guided for students above grade 8. Students between grade 3-7 might need some guidance , and students under grade 3 will need teacher/parent assistance . For future challenges, visit the activity series page or to receive email reminders.

    Our solar system is huge it has a diameter of 287.46 billion km!

    Do you know everything about our solar system? What happens if you change something within the solar system? Weve put together some resources and tools you can use to learn about our solar system. Then, you will have a chance to build your own solar system using Scratch, a programming language for everyone. By building your own, you can explore how our solar system works, and the connections between astronomical objects in the system.

    Between now and June 10, 2020, UBC astronomers will be available to answer your questions. We will also showcase your Scratch project on this page and via social media you can share by sending us a link to your project, or by making a video or drawing of your solar system.

    Things you need for creating your own solar system:

    Changing Your Planets Orbits

    Introduction to Polysun – Solar System Simulation Software for Academics

    Your planets move in orbits around their sun. The orbit of a planet is very nearly a circle, and we can describe the circle by its radius.

    The orbit of a comet is a little bit more complicated. A comet orbits in an ellipse, or oval, and is described by three numbers:

    • The semi-major axis
    • The eccentricity
    • The angle of approach

    You can try and adjust these numbers or the radius of the planets and see how it changes your orbits.

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    Make Your Own Solar System

    You can explore the science of solar systems by building your own! This project uses Scratch, a programming language thats easy and fun to learn. No Scratch experience is needed to do this project! Weve created a starter solar system, which you can check out here: Scratch solar system. Follow along with the steps below to edit this solar system and make it your own! If youre ever editing your project and would like to start over, you can always start a new remix by going back to the original project and following these instructions again.

    If youd like to learn more about the Scratch programming language, you can check the Scratch tutorials. If you have any questions, make sure to leave comments on this page! We will update these instructions if anything is not clear.

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