Planet Keynotes - Tips and Tricks

Here are a couple quick tips to help you with your Keynote presentation.

Mass and Gravity of your Planet

I'm sure you've found that the mass of your planet is ridiculously huge, something like:  829,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.  What does that even mean?!?  The number is so huge, that it is meaningless.

Instead, it makes more sense to compare your planet's mass to the mass of Earth.  Here is an interactive feature that lets you do this:

Planet Mass Comparison

Once you've balanced the scales, you can take a screenshot of the image, by pressing (Apple+Shift+3).  The screenshot is saved to your desktop as a .png file.  You can open the screenshot and then select the part of the image that you want by clicking and dragging.  Then hit Edit-->Copy.  Paste the image into your Keynote.  Let me know if you're having problems with this, and I'll help you.

Similarly, the gravity for your planet may be confusing.  For instance, Earth's gravity is 9.81 m/s2.  What does that even mean?!?  Again, it makes much more sense to compare your planet's gravity to Earth's gravity.  You will find this information listed under "Facts and Figures" on the NASA Solar System Exploration page.