The importance of outdoor learning is recognized for several reasons, as described, for example, in Refs. 1 and 2. It has always been a challenge and an opportunity, and in an era when viruses roam indoors in dangerous quantities, it is even more important to use the outdoors whenever possible to learn curriculum content.3 The activity described in this article is part of the science curriculum (physics and astronomy), but can be combined with several other subjects as part of an entire outdoor activity day. It also requires additional and unusual teacher involvement, as described below.
The main content of the learning unit presented in this article is the solar system. One of the basic goals of teaching about the solar system is to allow students to develop an idea of the dimensions and scales: the distance between the Sun and the planets and the size of the...