Churchill Science

Here’s our first official question for 2009-10! To learn more about the Sun, why not visit our Sun page by clicking at the top of the screen?

A comet is a mix of rocky material, water ice, and a variety of other ingredients (as pictured here). Try out making some different comets and launch them into orbit around the Sun!

Here’s a website I can’t believe I haven’t found earlier. You can type in your weight and find out how much you weigh on other planets, the moons of Jupiter, even the Sun and other stars.

Click on the picture of Lisa’s weight on other planets to try it:

Weight is really all about gravity. I would weigh only about 9 pounds on Pluto, but 3,790 pounds on the Sun. Yet I would not be any bigger or smaller sized.

Ever wondered how many Earths would add up to one Jupiter? How many Saturns would balance out one Sun? Find out with one of our favorite websites ever, the Planet Mass Comparison. Click one of the pictures below to try it yourself:

One Neptune = 9,501 Plutos!

14 Earths = 1 Uranus.

OK, OK, there’s actually no cosmic scale out in space weighing planets. This is actually measuring mass, which is a bit different than weight. Weight depends on where you’re standing. For example, you’d “weigh” a LOT more if you were on Jupiter or the Sun. (Not that you would survive long enough to get on a scale.) You even weigh a tiny bit less when you’re up in the mountains than you would at sea level. But you are the same size, with the same amount of “matter” inside your body, no matter where you are.

We were debating the other day why this planet might be on its side… what do you think?

Create your own planet with Planet 10!
221 did, and look what happened… Click on the picture to play the game!

Update: 222 won on the very first try! How did they do it???

Once you’ve made your planet, give it a name and launch it into our solar system. Watch the left side of the screen to see what your planet’s fate is!

If you take a screenshot of your planet, we’ll post it here!

Good luck!

By popular request…

In this game, you get to be the Sun. You can “fire” small, medium, or large solar winds at the Earth and watch as the Earth’s magnetic field produces an aurora in response. Then click “Evaluate” to find out what your solar winds did to the Earth.

The above videos show how the Earth’s magnetic field protects it from the Sun’s energy.

Here’s what it looks like when solar wind hits the Earth’s magnetic field. It causes the Northern and Southern Lights (Auroras).

This video starts with Pluto, a dwarf planet, and then moves up in size order. Can you see why everything in the solar system orbits the Sun and not Earth or another planet?

Also, look at the size of the Sun compared to other stars. What would happen if our planet orbited a bigger star? We are going to be talking more about stars and why bigger is NOT better!

What does our Sun look like today? Click here to take a look!
Some of the images you’ll see were taken with special cameras. There are some kinds of light that our eyes can’t see, like UV rays (the kind that give you sunburn) so we use these cameras to take pictures of the Sun, sort of like an X-ray machine takes pictures of your bones.

Click here to learn more facts about the Sun. From National Geographic’s great website about the solar system!