How was the Earth Formed - for Kids

Why the earth is round in shape?

Why does the earth spin?

Why does the earth rotate around the sun?

The answers to these questions are connected to the story of “How was the Earth Formed”.
It all started billions of years ago, with a giant, spinning cloud in space.
There are many such clouds in space right now. They are made up of chemicals in the form of gas and dust.
Some of these clouds are turning into new stars, the same way as five billion years ago, our sun and its planets were formed.
These clouds are hundreds of millions of miles wide!

The force of gravitation (the same force is keeping us on the ground) pulled the gas and dust particles into a shape of a huge, flat wheel, which spins around.
Gravitation slowly pulls the cloud together. Most of the gas is collected in the middle of the cloud and forms a lump that grows bigger and bigger.
As the lump gets bigger, its gravity becomes stronger and it pulls more gas into itself.
Because gravity pulls equally from all directions, the lump is squeezed into a shape of a round ball.
After a long period of time, there is a gigantic ball of gas in the middle of the wheel-shaped cloud.
This is the beginning of new sun.

In the rest of the cloud, other balls are also forming as gravity pulls bits of dust and gas together. After certain period of time (millions of years), most of the cloud is used up and there are only balls of gas and dust, spinning around the sun.
Planets are spinning around the sun because the cloud they were made from also had been spinning.
This is the way how the Planet earth and all other planets in our solar system were created, and how as you read this, other planets and solar systems are formed.

And this is why the earth rotates around the sun.

But how did the earth from spinning ball of dust and gas became a ball of rock and metal?

As the earth’s gravity pulled more dust and gas in, everything was squeezed together tighter and tighter!
This made the ball grow hotter and hotter and it became so hot that the bits of dust in it, which were mostly rock and metal dust, melted together.
The earth became a glowing ball.
But on the outside of the earth couldn’t stay hot.
So the earth began to cool down, and when melted rock and metal cools, it gets hard.
This way the earth became a ball of hard rock and metal, as it is today.
The earth still hasn’t cooled off and the middle is still fiercely hot, since part of the inside is still melted.