Using a tennis ball and a basketball, Veritasium‘s Derek Muller asks, “How Far Away is the Moon?” Explore the scale of the universe, starting with this…
Think about this: It takes like one second to go from the earth to the moon, takes eight minutes for light to travel to the Sun, and four years to go to our nearest star. And then consider that there are a hundred billion stars in our galaxy and as far as we know a hundred billion galaxies in the universe. The universe truly is bigger than we can imagine and certainly bigger than we can draw it to scale.
Then watch this: Why Does the Moon Orbit the Earth?
It takes the moon about 27 days to orbit the Earth. What makes it go round? It is the gravitational attraction of the Earth on the moon. Due to the moon’s velocity, the Earth keeps pulling the moon towards it without the moon actually getting closer to the Earth. This is similar to how satellites orbit the Earth.
Thanks, @metrprof.
This Webby award-winning video collection exists to help teachers, librarians, and families spark kid wonder and curiosity. TKSST features smarter, more meaningful content than what's usually served up by YouTube's algorithms, and amplifies the creators who make that content.
Curated, kid-friendly, independently-published. Support this mission by becoming a sustaining member today.