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ACTIVITY: Planet Card Sort

Purpose

This activity asks you to explore how planet formation is connected to star formation. Although you learned about star formation in Unit 3, you haven’t yet studied the process of planet formation. The purpose of this activity is to give you an opportunity to use your intuition and logic to make deductions about what might happen next to the matter that is left over after a star has formed.
"Artist’s Impression of a Baby Star Still Surrounded by a Protoplanetary Disc" by ESO/L. Calçada - ESO. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Process

Download the Planet Sort worksheet. Look at the photos of the different stages in the formation of a planet. Order the images from a planet’s beginning until it is fully formed, based on your knowledge and intuition. Don’t take more than 5 minutes to try to figure this out. You probably know more than you think you do. After you’ve arranged the images, download and check the answer key to see how you did!

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