Model & Scientists
What is the heliocentric model
This is the center of the Sun.
What is the core?
True or false: The Sun is a star.
TRUE
This is the largest planet and completes one rotation in approximately 10 hours.
What is Jupiter?
Name the four inner planets in order from the Sun.
What are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars?
This model places Earth at the center of the universe
What is the geocentric model?
The name of this visible layer of the Sun means “sphere of light.”
What is the photosphere?
These are sudden eruptions of energy and hot gas from the Sun’s surface.
What are solar flares?
This is the farthest planet from the Sun.
What is Neptune?
These two planets contain methane that contributes to their blue appearance.
What are Uranus and Neptune?
This scientist developed a heliocentric model in which Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun.
Who was Nicolaus Copernicus?
This thin, middle layer of the Sun’s atmosphere is located above the photosphere.
What is the chromosphere?
This stream of charged particles is released from the Sun’s corona.
What is solar wind?
Which one does not belong in our solar system: the Sun, eight planets, asteroids and comets, or the North Star?
What is the North Star?
Compare the surfaces of Earth and Mars by giving one similarity and one difference.
Both have features such as mountains, valleys, plains or volcanoes. Earth has abundant liquid water, while Mars is colder, drier and has a reddish surface
This scientist’s observations helped Johannes Kepler determine the shape of planetary orbits.
Who was Tycho Brahe?
This is the outermost atmospheric layer of the Sun.
What is the corona?
This object contains most of the mass and therefore most of the gravity in our solar system.
What is the Sun?
Place the inner planets in order from smallest to largest.
What are Mercury, Mars, Venus and Earth?
Compare the atmospheres of the outer planets.
The outer planets have thick atmospheres composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. Uranus and Neptune also contain methane.
Explain how gravity affects the movement patterns of planets in our solar system.
The Sun’s gravity pulls the planets toward it and keeps them traveling in orbit around the Sun.
The Sun produces its energy through this process.
What is nuclear fusion?
Why does the Sun have a greater gravitational influence than any planet?
The Sun has much more mass than any planet, so it produces a stronger gravitational pull
True or false: Each gas planet is small, dense and rocky. Correct the statement if it is false.
What is false? The terrestrial or inner planets are small, dense and rocky
Compare the atmospheres of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
Mercury has almost no atmosphere; Venus has a thick carbon-dioxide atmosphere; Earth’s atmosphere is mostly nitrogen; and Mars has a thin atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide.