Scientific Notation Space Project

This is a fun and creative project for students to practice scientific notation while learning about the planets in our solar system. The project is in three parts:

I. Students will use the provided planet fact sheets to learn about four planets in our solar system. They will write facts about each planet (such as the orbit length around the sun) in scientific notation.

II. Students will create a fictional planet, and will make up statistics about their planet, given constraints like "the orbit length must be between the orbit length of Mars and the orbit length of Jupiter". This will let students practice comparing numbers written in scientific notation.

• An optional extension page allows students to imagine tiny fictional creatures living on their planet, and will consider their weights, the sum of their weights, and differences of their weights using scientific notation with negative exponents.

III. Students will create a travel guide to their planet.

Included in this file:

• Teacher instructions
• A five-page student work packet
• A grading rubric (kid-friendly)
• An answer key
• Planet Fact Sheets

When I do this project with my classes, I let them work on it for one day (90-minutes) in class, and then they finish it for homework. It could also be done over a 2-day period in class. My students really love this project!!

Note: This project has been updated recently thanks to some awesome customer feedback. Thanks!