Where is Earth in the sky?

I've worked in various planetariums for over a decade now, and I've done many shows for many different groups. Doing shows for kids is always fun, since they are full of curiosity and often ask interesting questions. Some of their questions, though, can catch you off guard. A perfect example is the title of this blog: "Where is Earth in the sky?" Generally I'll get this question from young elementary school kids (1st - 3rd grade or so) after I've shown them where a few of the visible planets are in the sky.

The first time a kid asked me to point out Earth in the planetarium sky I was dumbfounded. It never occurred to me that anyone would ask such a question. Earth's below our feet, not in the sky! I honestly don't remember how I responded, or how the kid reacted to my answer (it was over 10 years ago, after all). But since then I've heard the question a few more times, and I've found out from other planetarium people that they all get that question from time to time. But for a long time I still couldn't fathom why anyone would ask that.

I finally found out why while doing background research for my doctoral thesis. Kids have all sorts of misconceptions about, well, about everything (so do adults, but that's a story for another post). Some they pick up from television, some from their friends, some from misunderstanding what their teachers tell them (and, sadly, some straight from their teachers, no misunderstanding required), some they make up all on their own based on their own observations and logical deductions. For example, little kids see the world around them and assume the world is flat. Their understanding of gravity (that gravity always acts down) reinforces that view - if the world wasn't flat, we would all fall off if we were anywhere other than at the top. It's quite logical, actually. But then they learn in school (or elsewhere) that Earth is actually round like a ball. Very few kids, at this point, drop their old ideas and embrace the scientific view of a spherical Earth. After all, their old ideas have served them well so far.

Most kids adopt a synthetic view that's some combination of their old ideas and the ideas they've just learned about. Some accept a spherical Earth, but believe that people can only live on "top". Others imagine a sphere where the bottom hemisphere is land and the top hemisphere is air, and people live on the flat part of the bottom hemisphere. And still others imagine two Earths - one where we all live, which is flat, and one that is a spherical planet out in space. It's probably the kids who have this last misconception (often called "dual Earth") that ask me to point out Earth in the sky - they actually believe there is a separate planet up there!