Order out of Chaos: Our Solar System Children’s Ideas About the Solar System

Below are common ideas children in grades K-6 have about this topic, compiled from research on children’s ideas about science (see the Session 1 Children’s Ideas Bibliography). Consider what evidence might refute this idea, and why a child would be likely to believe this?

1. Children’s theories of the origin of the solar system and the Earth include: 1) the solar system has always been there 2) the Sun collided with another celestial body to create the planets and 3) the origin of the Earth involved explosions or collisions of stars and galaxies.

The solar system formed from a cloud of dust and gas that, as gravity brought the material closer together, began to spin. This cloud eventually collapsed into a flat disk, and the planets formed through the accretion, or accumulation, of matter, which further coalesced into individual planets. The use of the term “Big Bang” may skew children’s ideas about the Earth’s beginnings, but the term does remind us that there was an event which started the universe’s growth, and that the universe is still expanding today. Children’s limited perception of the passage of time can influence their ideas of the permanence or ‘forever-ness’ of the solar system.

2. Earth is flat and motionless.

The Earth, like the other planets, is spherical in shape. This is why, even with the strongest telescope, we can’t see straight across from one end of the country to the other. The Earth is not motionless — as with every other planet in our solar system, the Earth rotates on its axis and orbits the Sun. The fact that we cannot feel any motion as Earth rotates perpetuates the perspective that the Earth is motionless. Evidence of movement, like night and day and the seasons, help us understand otherwise.