What do you see?

…a different dust was created and

after that still more of the dust  circled the Sun

until something surprising happened.

The dust clumped together into large round balls.

And planets like our Earth were born.

What is the color of the earth?

Selfie with earth from space!

Astronaut Scott Kelly takes a selfie with earth in the background from the International Space station. While describing earth these were his exact words  “The planet is incredibly beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful……”

So what do you think the color of earth is?

The Blue Planet

But why blue? Why not green or brown or white? What are all the things present on the earth?

The colorful land cover

Why do we not see those colors? Shouldn't the earth look multicolored?

Why doesn't the earth look like this?

Let's figure that out..

Step 1 : Draw a circle

Step 2 : Draw some small irregular shapes inside it

Step 3 : Color the small irregular shapes green , brown, yellow , ash etc.

Step 4 : Color the rest of the circle blue

Step 5: Stick your picture on a wall and look at it from a distance

What is the color you see mostly? Why?

Now what about the earth? Is the blue color dominant? Why is it so?

Earth has more water than land!!

Surface water

In a nutshell our Earth appears as a beautiful blue marble with swirls of white and areas of white, brown, yellow, and green from space.

• The blue color is water, which covers approx 71 percent of Earth’s surface.
• The white swirls are clouds.
• The brown, yellow, and green areas are land.
• The white areas are ice and snow.

However from really really far off it appears like a “Pale blue dot!”

What is the shape of the earth?

Is it Spherical? A Sphere is round or ball shaped.

Let’s make a sphere

Now do you remember anything else about the earth? Is it straight or is it slightly tilted?

Let’s make the axis

Do you remember that the earth keeps moving? How does it move?

Hint 1: Movement 1

The spinning of the earth around itself is called rotation. It takes the earth about 24 hours, or one day, to make one complete rotation.

Hint 2 : Movement 2

At the same time, the earth is moving around the sun. This is called a revolution. Revolution causes seasons.

Show us how the earth rotates and revolves

The speed of the Earth’s rotation (roughly 1000 miles / hour) has affected the shape of the Earth. The Earth at poles and bulging at the center. Thus earth is not a sphere but an oblate spheroid.  It is like a sphere squashed from the top and bulged out at the poles.

Let’s turn the sphere into an oblate spheroid

How big / small the earth is?

Around  1,300,000 earths can fit into the sun!

What does Earth look like from outer space?

Let us measure up !!

How tall are you?

... around 120 cms!

How tall is the earth?

Ah ha! The earth is 12,742 kms tall ! that is 12,742 * 100,000 cms = 1,274,200,000cms!!

That's roughly 12,742,000 of you , almost 13 million of you perched on top of each other!!

What is the biggest animal you have seen?

How much does a elephant weigh?

How much do you weigh?

So almost 300 of you will make up an elephant!!

How much do you think the earth weighs?

OMG! That's a lot of zeros!

Almost 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 elephants weigh as much as the earth!!!! What’s that number!!

That's 1 sextillion!

300 sextillion of you makes up the earth

There aren't even so many of you on the earth!!

Most humans can walk about 5 kms per hour

Now how long would it take to walk from the North Pole to the South pole?

Around 4000 hours!!!! That is 167 days!

So if you start walking from the North pole on 1st January of the year then you will reach the South Pole on 16th June!! you have to walk all day and night without stopping at all!

Now let’s go around the equator

The equator is 40,075 kilometers that is 40,075,000 meters.

Now how long can that be? What if we could make a children's chain holding hands around the equator? How many of you would we need? Let's see. Stand against the wall again with your hands outstretched. Let Mom or Dad make two points at the place where your palms touch the wall. Now measure up the distance. Mostly it will be close to one meter.

We need a team of 40 million 75 thousand 7 years olds to stand hand in hand to wrap around the equator!

And how long would it take for you to traverse the equator? if you go 5 kms per hour.

8015 hours!! 334 days! That's almost a year!!

So if you start walking from a point on the equator on 1st January of the year then you will reach the same spot on 30th November!! you have to walk all day and night without stopping at all!