GPS & Geocaching in Education

Link: http://coord.info/GCKGC9

While out geocaching, I ran across a cache that incorporates many educational ideas. The name is "What If..." and asks the question, what if the Sun were the size of a community water tank? The placer has scaled the Solar System based on the size of the tank as the size of the Sun. I have not completed all of the stages yet, but out as far as Saturn, you can see the tank from each cache or planet location - 8.5 miles away at Saturn! It is an amazing way to help students visualize the sheer dimensions and emptiness of the solar system.

If you are in Cedar City, the work has already been done for you, but there are a multitude of ways to incorporate this into your instruction in many different classes. You could...

• ...use this in Science to teach the planets in the Solar System. At each planet location, you could tell how large the planet would be at this distance from your "Sun" and then talk about the orbit, diameter, mass, etc. of each planet as you went. The Nine Planets website has images and all of the information that you will need! If you need a little help with converting the sizes of the planets and the distances to scale, I have made a file called Planetary Conversions in Excel that will do the work for you.
• ...use this in Math to teach conversions, ratios, fractions, etc. Find a suitable "Sun" and measure its dimensions. Then use this and the information at Nine Planets to convert each planet size and distance from the sun to your scale. Feel free to use the Excel file linked above for help.
• ...use this in Geography to help teach mapping skills. Find a suitable "Sun" to figure out the relative sizes and distances and have your students locate and map spots where each planet could be and how big it would be at that distance.
• ...extend this in Science by assigning moons from the planets to your students. Based on your scale, they would have to calculate how big the moon would be and how far away it should be from it's planet. Extra credit could be given for making a model of their moon.

Of course, the real power of these activities is not to just do the math or project, but to actually go out and let your students experience the scale and the distances involved for themselves. Be careful, the larger your Sun is, the further you will have to travel to Pluto!