Report

= Design Your Own Planet =

Reebokchoy2 – Matthew Dell’Angelo, Breanne Klarenbeek, Virginia Lee, Megan Matkowski, Joel Tham, Shen Wang =The Concept:= Imagine if you had the power to create planets, manipulate celestial events, and cultivate life. This exhibit offers visitors to be immersed into these remarkable experiences by creating their own, distinct planets. They can adjust the many factors that contribute to the planets’ makeup, properties, and functionality, such as atmospheric makeup, distance from a sun, radius and shape of orbit, type of core, density, size, weather patterns, amount of land mass, and number of moons. The planets collectively form a whole galaxy that is continuously growing as more are created and added. Furthermore, not only are the properties of the planets customizable, but the dimension of time is included too. The galaxy starts off in its early stages, and as people add their planets, it slowly expands. Also, the planets do not remain static, but travel around and interact with each other. Located in the //Weston Family Innovation Centre//, this exhibit allows visitors to explore their creative side, while having the challenge to try and create a unique and sustainable planet. =The Walkthrough:= Upon entering, the visitor will be greeted by a holographic image of a galaxy above the exhibit. Beams of light will come from the galaxy and fall onto the ground creating projections of the planets as they are being formed. **The aeons it takes to form a planet from its birth from space debris to the volcanic turbulent seas of its childhood to the potential development of life on the planet.** As they see this, the visitors will be thinking, “Can I touch it? See it up close? Interact with it somehow?” Well sadly, when they walk up to the holograms they will not be able to physically “touch” it. Instead, their smartphones will alert them and they will be asked to download an application that will allow them to create their own planet. In addition, there will be beautiful touchscreens at the four corners of the exhibit that will allow visitors without smartphones to create their own planet as well. The application will have a streamlined design that gives the visitor a few options. One option is mainly geared towards children and the average visitor. This option will allow the visitors to customize their own planets by dragging sliding bars to choose various properties such as the size of their planet, the weather patterns, and the number of moons. Another option is for the repeat users that want to have more control over the customization of their planet. This option will feature the same sliding bars, but give many more controllable factors as well as a wider limit, creating the potential to create different celestial bodies (such as a planet that is too small that is instead turned into a moon by a larger planet). The third and last option is for the very advanced users, which opens up many more possibilities. They will be able to customize as many factors as they can think of from the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to the size of the rocky plates that allow for plate tectonics to occur. These three options will give challenge to all levels of users as they create their own planet. Once their planet is completed there will be a holographic projection of their planet’s creation in front of their very eyes, including all the cosmic collisions and interactions that are required. The visitors will be able to use their smartphone to zoom, fast forward, slow down, and replay this projection at their will. They will also be able to see through a beam of light exactly where their planet is in relation to the entire galaxy. After leaving the exhibit, the visitor will still be able to track the progress of their planet in the galaxy on their smartphone device. When the visitor checks back to their smartphone they will find a whole host of things to do. They will be able to see the sun rise and set on the surface of their planet, see the weather patterns that result from the atmosphere, go back in time to the Big Bang itself, and see the creation of the galaxy and the stars and solar systems within it. Visitors will be able to see how the factors they chose to alter determined the physical appearance of the planet, whether it has the ability to be stable or wildly chaotic, how it moves around the galaxy and how it interacts with other planets, asteroids, comets, and other celestial bodies. However, it is not always easy for a visitor to make his or her planet sustainable. Many will enter this exhibit with little or no knowledge of planets and their characteristics. As a result, most visitors will be unaware of which property corresponds to what planetary change. This question will be left for them to answer – so that they may be able to create a planet that meets the requirements of this challenge. They will have access to all the properties of their planets in detail, as well as the theories, science, assumptions, and possibilities that their planet composition could hold in store. Videos will show the history of the astronomical sciences as well as how these are applied to the popular theories of global warming, thermonuclear winter, and etc. The immersive experience will bring the visitors into seeing the world through the eyes of the astronomer, considered as one of the most humbling careers. If they seek to create a planet that may sustain life, they will also become aware the characteristics of our planet in the process – and why our planet is so special compared to the planets in the universe. The visitors would see through their experience just how valuable and precious Earth is in the grand cosmic scale. =The Science=

Examples Adjustable Planet Properties
**Atmospheric makeup:** The atmosphere affects properties like weather patterns and the greenhouse effect. **Distance from a sun:** This will affect the planet’s orbit, climate, and length of a year. **Shape of orbit:** Not all orbits have to be circular; they can be elliptical or even irregular if around multiple stars. **Core:** If the core does not have a sufficient amount of thermal energy, it might become an asteroid, moon, or demi-planet. **Size:** The size can determine what type of celestial body is created, such as a moon, planet, or star. **Weather patterns:** Weather can be affected by several factors such as convection currents and gravitational pulls from moons. **Moons:** If the moon of a planet is relatively large in size, it can create significant gravitational pulls that can affect tides based on its distance and orbit around the planet. Moons can also create torque on a planet’s orbit.

Celestial Mechanics
All matter is affected by the four fundamental forces: strong nuclear forces, electromagnetic forces, weak nuclear forces, and gravity. Gravity is the weakest of the four, as shown by the value of the gravitational constant:. However, it is the main force that affects celestial bodies due to the sheer mass of the planets. The force between two planets can be modeled by the equation, where //FG// represents the force acting on each planet, //m1// and //m2// represents the mass of the two bodies in kilograms, and //r// represents the distance between their centres of mass in metres. Since the distance between celestial bodies are so massive, the other fundamental forces are negligible in comparison to the force of gravity. This equation can be used to model the galaxy in the exhibit. By manipulating it, the planets can be programmed to move across space realistically and interact with the other celestial bodies. For example, you can derive an equation for the acceleration of a planet, moon, or other body by combining the force equation with Newton’s Second Law, as shown in the equation, where //M// is the mass of the body it is orbiting around. Also, since most of the planets will be travelling in circular motion around other celestial bodies such as stars, their speed can be found using the equation, which can be simplified into.

Collision Theory
Collisions theory states that when large objects collide with planets (such as asteroids or other planets), they can break off to form orbiting moons, leaving behind massive magma oceans on both bodies. Since this exhibit will consist of moving celestial bodies, this theory will be incorporated to help predict the outcome of collisions.