Working Solar System
The solar system always makes great science fair projects, even if it's just a diorama. You can do this working diorama all by yourself.
You will need the following materials:
2 large illustration boards taped together
1 bag of balloons
1 balloon pump
50 bendable wires
modeling clay
super glue
ruler
pencil
cutter
Instructions:
Research the solar system online. Get detailed dimensions of distance between planets, planet size, and orbit patterns.
Plot your solar system on the large illustration boards. The planet distances should be to scale. Make sure you plot the orbits of the different planets as well. Remember that no planet has a perfectly circular orbit, so study this well.
Create a tiny hole where the sun will go with your cutter. Stick one bendable wire into this hole. Reinforce the base of the wire by super gluing a bit of modeling clay around the wire base. Clay will usually stick on its own, but adding super glue should really fortify the structure.
Blow up a yellow balloon and attach the end of the balloon to the top of the wire.
Begin making small holes near the base of the sun. your bendable wires will go into these holes (fortified with clay and glue.)
At about two inches after the hole, bend the wire and stretch it out to where a planet should be. For example, the wire for Mercury will not stretch out too far because Mercury is right next to the sun.
At the spot where the planet should be, bend the wire back up and attach an appropriately colored and sized balloon on top of the wire. Do this for all the planets, making sure that the planet is more or less at the same level of the sun. You may cut the wire tops if you have to in order to achieve this.
You will find that each of your planets have the ability to orbit the sun thanks to the hole and modeling clay.
In order to create a moon to orbit the earth, attach a wire to the earth wire with clay, and place a small balloon at the end. This wire will spin around the earth wire, causing the moon to orbit the earth.
Concept Explanation:
Each planet is a certain distance from the sun, and a certain size, and also following a certain orbit. While the orbits cannot be perfectly recreated in the spinning, having them plotted out, can help position the planets at different places around the yellow balloon sun, giving more space to the diorama. The asteroid belt need not spin, and can just stand on small wires where it should be. This is one of the great science fair projects on the solar system because you can see movement apart from order. This project teaches a student how large each planet really is, the planets colors, features, and the many other facets of the solar system like the Kuiper belt, dwarf planets, and space dust.
