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’

Resource 6: Problem solving - solutions