UGears Mechanical Tellurion Wooden Mechanical Model Kit

The UGears Mechanical Tellurion Wooden Mechanical Model Kit has been designed to provide you with a detailed model of the Sun, Earth, and Moon while accurately depicting phases and cycles. A tellurion (also spelled tellurian, tellurium, and sometimes called a loxocosm), is an ingenious mechanism that depicts the cosmic dance between Sun, Earth, and Moon. The causes of day and night, the phases of the moon, and the changing seasons are seen and understood according to the movements of this 3D puzzle.

As you study the movements of your UGears model Tellurion, you will learn that the full moon occurs when the moon is behind the earth, away from the sun. This is because the sun illuminates the entire surface of the moon that is visible to us (the "bright side" of the moon). In contrast, when the moon is between the earth and the sun, the sun's rays illuminate that part of the moon that is turned away from us (the "dark side" of the moon).

UGears took extra care to ensure that this model is well-timed and has tight tolerances, no "close enough" measuring here. In representing the orbital periods of the Earth and the Moon, UGears' design engineers have given the Mechanical Tellurion a sophisticated gear system (first worked out by Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens in the 17th C) to have the most accurate approximations possible in a wooden mechanism at this scale. The Earth gearing has a 365.256-day orbital period, while the Moon-Earth gear system has an orbital period of 27.323, giving this model accuracies to within one-thousandth of a day.

Specifications:

• Recommended Age: 14+
• Level: Intermediate
• Number of Parts: 249
• Assembly Time: 5 hours

This product was added to our catalog on April 12, 2023