Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Earth Layer Model project

There has been no post in this blog for a while. I have been meaning to but then we have been both lazy and busy. But today, I thought I would post about Big Sis's school project. It might help other kids in the future. She too had got part of  the idea from the internet. Also she wanted me to post about her project on this blog. So there.

In her 5th grade class they have been learning about layers of the earth. Well, I guess they already knew it from first grade but the current class build on it and delves deeper. For their science project, their teacher asked them to make a 3-D earth layer model and also write a fiction on topic involving "Journey to the Center of the Earth".

This was how her finished model looked like. It is made of play-doh and rests on a board, she broke in karate. The model is housed in a cookie box which was painted by her. The story, she does not want me to share. Making home made play-doh would have been the best idea but of course I chickened out and so we had to buy tubs of play-doh. If you can make play-doh at home, that would be great.

Based on Srijita's comments, I am updating this post with little more details on the steps:

1. Make play-doh balls of different color for the different layers. Keeping in mind the layer thickness, the ball sizes would vary. So, say starting with "inner core", you make a round red play-doh ball to represent inner core.

2. Next you take a larger orange play-doh ball for the outer core and roll it out to a large disc. BigSis used a "chaki-beloon"-- a wooden board where we roll rotis.

3. Then put the small red  "inner core" ball at the center of the rolled out  oramge dough and wrap this "outer core" around  the red  "inner core" ball. Smooth the surface. Do you realize this is almost like making a kochuri or stuffed puri.

4. You next roll out a larger yellow dough disc to represent the mantle. Put the two-layered ball from step 3 at the center of this and wrap the yellow mantle around it. Continue similarly with the next layers. You get the idea right ?

5. The outer most layer is made with blue play-doh. The continents in green and polar caps in white were made separately and stuck on the blue at the very end. The circular globe was then cut carefully to reveal the inner layers.

6. The notes were wrapped around toothpicks.

7. The earth model was finally placed on a wooden board(the ones from karate) and push-pins were used to as a base to place the ball on the board

4 comments:

  1. Hi,
    Saw this. Very good. Have to make something on same lines (layers of saturn & Jupiter). Few questions? So did you cover one laver over the other. Does the doh put over the layers? what did you use to stick the notes - plastic toothpics? lastly how did you fix it over the board - the green things that i can see?

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    Replies
    1. Srijita
      I updated the post with details. Hope it helps. the green things are push-pins, they act as a base to balance the globe

      Delete
  2. How did you preserve the model so it didn't dry out? We need to do the project a week before due date. Wondering what is the best way to store it before presenting it?

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  3. This is excellent information. I got some new idea. Thank you for your post.

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