real-world applications - MathnMind

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REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS
STUDENT ACTIVITY for Transparency 8
Use with Lesson 8-3.
About Those Massive Planets
Our Sun and the nine planets in our solar system may have been formed about 5 billion years
ago. The first four planets from the Sun—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—are called the
terrestrial planets. These planets all have magnetic fields, solid surfaces, and are comparatively
dense. The five outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—are spheres of
hydrogen and other gases. Four of these planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—called
the gas giants, are much larger than the terrestrial planets. Pluto, the most distant planet, is a
ball of frozen gases. Pluto is also the smallest planet; it is about the size of our Moon.
People began studying the planets thousands of years ago. Until Galileo built his own telescope
in 1609, characteristics such as the rings of Saturn or Jupiter’s moons were unknown. Improved
technology has made study of the planets much easier. However, many questions about planets
and their environments remain unanswered.
Directions: Use what you have seen and read to answer the following questions.
1. What is the relationship between the mass of Mars and the mass of Earth?
about 0.1 of the mass of Earth.
The mass of Mars is
2. Select two planets whose masses are written using the same exponent. Compute the difference in the
masses of the two planets. Sample answer: The difference between the masses of Earth
and Venus is 1.11 1024 kilograms.
3. Which planet has the greatest mass? What is the mass of that planet relative to that of Earth?
Jupiter; the mass of Jupiter is about 300 times the mass of Earth.
4. The mass of the Sun is 1,828,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. How many times
greater than the mass of Earth is the mass of the Sun? The mass of the Sun is about 3 106 times greater than the mass of the Earth.
Making the Connection
5. Compare the mass of Jupiter to the total of the masses of the other planets.
about 2.5 times the sum of the masses of the other planets.
Jupiter’s mass is
6. What does its density tell about a planet? What types of units are used to express density? Use a
reference to find the densities of the planets. How do the densities of the terrestrial planets compare
to the densities of the gas giants? A planet’s density is its mass per unit volume.
Densities in ounces per cubic inch are: Mercury, 3.13; Venus, 3.03; Earth 3.19;
Mars, 2.27; Jupiter, 0.759; Saturn, 0.40; Uranus, 0.7; Neptune, 1.0; Pluto, 0.2.
Terrestrial planets have greater densities.
© Glencoe/McGraw-Hill T8 Glencoe Algebra 1