The planet Mars holds a lively past.
If humans venture out onto another planet, Mars is almost certainly going to be the target. For this reason, the planet has become well-known throughout popular culture. Science projects in school can serve as an excellent method to express many of the intriguing facts about the planet that continue to interest NASA, which has spent billions of dollars studying the planet's features.
Viewing Project
Separated by about 35 million miles, Mars is only slightly farther away from the Earth than Venus. The main difference is that Mars provides a clear view of its surface to astronomers or anyone willing to set up a telescope. One way to take advantage of this, assuming there is an available telescope, is to set up a viewing project and have students sketch the surface structures as they see them. Find Mars using a chart, such as the one at the Naked Eye Planets website.
Size
A project for smaller children can be to make a scale model of the planet. Create the project by using foam balls, which can easily be painted. As Mars, which is roughly 4,200 miles in diameter, is about half of the diameter of the Earth (8,000 miles in diameter), it will be relatively easy to determine the correct size of the project's planets on the correct scale.
Water and Mars
There are few mysteries that have caught the spotlight related to Mars as well as the discussion of water on the planet. Although it's still not certain whether water exists on the planet today, NASA -- as suggested by findings from its Mars Global Surveyor -- thinks that water and ice have a small probability of existing on the surface in very small quantities and have a much higher probability of existing in some form below the surface. Methane also exists in abundance. Create a project showing the terrain maps of Martian ice, which mostly occurs at the poles. Discuss how ice also potentially means that bacteria may exist on the Red Planet.
Surface Depictions and Moons
Projects can be created on all the surface structures of Mars. Extremely ambitious students can create a model of the planet's surface. Mars has two moons -- Deimos and Phobos -- both smaller than the Earth's own moon. The planet contains a huge valley known as the Valles Marineris, which stretches roughly 3,000 miles across the planet. The mountain Olympus Mons is estimated at over 88,000 feet, much taller than the Earth's Mount Everest.
Tags: Create project, miles diameter, model planet, planet Mars, probability existing, roughly miles
