Explain how the internal composition between the two classes of the planets account for the differences in den

Question

Can you explain how the internal composition between the two classes of the planets account for the differences in densities?

I hate astronomy. This questions is talking about the two different types of planets, the gas giants and the earth like planets. My school book is a joke, it doesn't explain any of this. Please help!

Answer 1

the question is a little vague, but let's see.

the earth-like planets are basically made of minerals ( metals and the like. you know, ground. :p ) and the gas-like planets are just that; they're made of gasses.

what you have here is pretty simple. a sponge cake, for example, is less dense than, say, a block of wood, because the composition ( let's say ingredients ) of the sponge cake is less dense than the ingredients of a block of wood.

inside a sponge cake is basically cake and air. inside a block of wood is basically, yes, wood. you should know that cake and air are less dense than wood, so as a whole, the sponge cake is less dense than wood.

same here. the earth planets are made of stuff that are denser than what the gas planets are made up of ( gas ). so IN GENERAL, the earth planets are supposedly much denser than the gas planets.

i don't know how far your question really talks about, but basically, this is it in a gist.

Answer 2

You're taking an astronomy course, and you don't like it?  That's pretty sad.  Perhaps your text is dull, or difficult to read.  There's tons of material out there that is exciting.

You can measure the size of Jupiter in a telescope, and you can figure out how far away it was when you looked, and therefore figure out it's size.  You can figure out Jupiter's mass by seeing how it affects other objects.  With the mass and size, you can figure out the average density. Then you can make a guess as to what it must be made of.

Jupiter's average density is fairly low.  While it might have an iron or rocky core, this core isn't what most of Jupiter is made of.  Jupiter has to be mostly made of something lighter, like hydrogen.  That's a good initial guess, because hydrogen is so common in the Universe.  It's also got some helium - which is also common.  Of course, you can then look at Jupiter with a spectroscope and find out what's on top.

Earth has much higher average density.  It's got to have a pretty big iron core. We can check this with seismometers, too. Mercury is even higher.  It's got to be mostly iron - not just a core.