Resource 5: Interesting facts about the earth
Background information / subject knowledge for teacher
This resource provides you with some information about the Earth and about Africa. Get your students to guess the answers. You can also get them to estimate things like each other’s height and weight, the length of the room etc. Being able to estimate measurements is a useful skill in science as it enables scientists to spot errors.
If some of the students in your class are finding this topic easy, you could ask them to calculate the density of the Earth and the Moon.
Density = mass/volume
Volume = 4/3 π r3 (π = 3. 142) r = radius
The Earth
Diameter = 12,760 km
Radius = 6,380 km
Mass = 5.972 x 1024 kg
Crust = 40 km thick
Distance from the Earth to the Sun = 1. 426 x 109 km
Distance from Earth to the Moon = 384,000 km
The Moon
Diameter = 3,475 km
Radius = 1,738 km
Mass = 7.35 x 1022 kg
Africa
Distance from the most northerly point (Ras ben Sakka in Tunisia) to the most southerly point (Cape Agulhas in South Africa) = 8,000 km
Distance from the most westerly point in Africa (Cape Verde) to the most easterly point in Africa (Ras Hafun in Somalia) = 7,360 km
Resource 4: Measurement ‘circus’
