wooden solar system (model)

[chris hennelly]

I have a metre diameter ash ring and a straight road.

If the ash represents the Sun, how far along the road and what diameter would other rings have to be to represent planets?(road is about 1km).

 

...just to give my children some idea of scale.....

[Stubby]

Well the sun is 93 million miles way from the earth sooo...............

[bobh]

Read this, you may need a MUCH longer driveway

 

http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/solarsystem/

[peatff]

Try converting some distances, if you convert the miles to millimetres you will still need about 58 miles from sun to earth.

[Climbingmagnus]

The sun's diameter is 1,391,684,000 metres so our scale factor if the 'sun' is now 1m in diameter is 1/1,391,684,000 which is 0.000000000719

 

This means that Mercury will be 41 metres away and about 3.5mm in diameter. Venus will be 77.7 metres away and will be 8.7mm in diameter. Earth will be 107m away and will be 9.2mm in diameter.

 

Just type distance from sun to Mars and diamer of Mars into google and multiply the value by 0.000000000719 to do the rest. n.b. don't forget to add an extra 3 zeros onto the 'real' numbers before you convert them so they are in m not km.

[Climbingmagnus]

Neptune is 324m away so your road is long enough but is your eyesight good enough to see a 3.5mm planet at that distance?

[Climbingmagnus]

Also the Moon would be 2.5mm in diameter and be 276 mm away from the Earth.

 

you could fit about 30 of the international space station in the diameter of a human hair and they'd be 0.3mm off the surface of the earth. This is fun

 

Massive thumbs up for doing this with your kids! More kids need to do fun stuff like this and realise science isn't about sitting in a classroom being bored.

 

The thing that always makes me appreciate the scale of these things (and the fragility of the Earth) is the 'Pale Blue Dot' photo taken by Voyager from the edge of the solar system and Carl Sagan's description of it here:

 

[ame]

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[se7enthdevil]

i couldn't have put it better myself...