Our Lab

Title: Visualizing the distance to the moon

Goal: Using cutouts of the earth and moon, along with a tape measure, we created a scaled representation of the distance from the center of the earth to the moon.

Procedure:
We looked up the distance from the earth to the moon (384400 km) and the diameter of the earth (about 12700 km). Next we measured the diameter of our paper earth (7.5 inches = 19 cm). The ratio of the earth diameter-to-distance-to-moon was determined (about 30). We then multiplied our paper earth diameter by the earth diameter to distance to moon ratio to get relative distance between the earth and the moon (about 575 cm)

Data:
Earth to Moon Distance = 384400 km
Diameter of the earth = 12700 km
Ratio of distance to moon to diameter to earth = 30
Diameter of paper earth = 19 cm
Relative length for distance between earth to moon = 575 cm

Conclusion:
The moon is pretty darn far away. It's about 30 earth diameters away from the center of the earth.

(Picture in first post was taken from our "moon" looking back to our "earth")