Resumen de Exploring the Solar System with a Human Orrery
One of the fundamental learning goals of introductory astronomy is for the students to gain some perspective on the scale and structure of the solar system. Many astronomy teachers have laid out the planets along a long strip of paper1or across a school grounds or campus.2Other activities that investigate the motion of the planets are often computer based,34hiding the aweinspiring distances between the planets. Our human orrery activity, adapted from the design at the Armagh Observatory in Ireland,567combines the best of both approaches by creating a working model of the solar system that mimics both the scale and the motion of the planets.
