Spin the Solar System
Eight planets, each in its own colour – rusty Mars, blue Neptune, pale gold Saturn. Press SPIN! and the wheel picks one:
The eight planets
- Mercury – closest to the Sun, and a year lasts 88 days.
- Venus – the hottest, about 465 °C under clouds of acid.
- Earth – the only one with liquid water on the surface, so far.
- Mars – rusty red, with the tallest volcano in the Solar System.
- Jupiter – the biggest, with a storm larger than the Earth.
- Saturn – the rings, and a planet less dense than water.
- Uranus – turns on its side, as if it had been knocked over.
- Neptune – the windiest, with gusts over 2 000 km/h.
Dwarf planets and moons
Two more groups are on the wheel but switched off. Dwarf planets brings Pluto – a planet until 2006, and a dwarf planet since – together with Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake. Moons brings the ten best known, from our own to Saturn’s Titan, which has lakes of methane. Click a group to put it on:
Open a group to untick what a lesson does not need or to add a body of your own:
For the classroom
- Project roulette: everybody gets the planet the wheel gives them to write about.
- Quizzes – spin, and name one fact about it before the next spin.
- Order them: spin five and put them in order of distance from the Sun.
- Drawing: draw the body the wheel picked, in its own colour.
- Model making: each group builds the one they spun.
Tick Take the winner off the wheel under Options so everybody gets a different one: