A long time ago in a county far, far away
we built a model of the solar system.
(This was before Pluto was demoted.)
Most models of the solar system put either
~the planets' distances in scale to each other, or
~the planets' size in scale to each other.
But not both.
So we went out on an isolated country road, and made ourselves a scale model of the solar system, with the planets' sizes in scale to their distances from each other. We made 1 inch equal to 50,000 km. This is awesome. When you plunk down a couple grains of rice and a few lentils and a marshmallow or two across the space of nearly two miles, you really see why we call it "space."
The next time we laid out our scale model, several years later, I realized that the planets aren't lined up in a nice, neat row. So our model shouldn't be in a row either. That time, we placed our planets in two dimensions: Pluto was about two miles to the west of the sun, Neptune 1.5 miles south of the sun, and Uranus a mile east of our 20" sun. That really shows you the vast nothingness that's out there. This project also gives you a really good grip on the difference between the inner and outer planets!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
If you're interested in trying this out yourself,
and if you don't want to bother with the arithmetic,
these are the numbers we used:
Sun 20" diameter
draw it in sidewalk chalk, or use a smallish laundry basket as your model
about 96 feet away
(I took 22 paces, which are about 4.5 feet each,
calling a "pace" a set of right & left steps,
but I have long legs)
Mercury 1/10" (we used a crumb of rice)
about 180' from the sun
(another 18 paces)
Venus 1/4" (we used a dried pea)
about 250' from the sun
(another 15.5 paces)
Earth 1/4" (dried pea)
with the moon 7" away
1/16" (a pin head)
about 380 feet from the sun
(another 29 paces past the earth)
Mars 1/7" (a small lentil)
Then we went back to the sun, and drove,
using the car's odometer to measure distance.
Sun is your zero point.
Jupiter (3" -- a baseball)
0.25 miles from the sun
Saturn (2.5" -- a racquetball)
0.2 miles past Jupiter
or .45 from sun
Uranus (1" -- large marshmallow)
0.45 miles past Saturn
or .9 miles from sun
Neptune (also 1")
0.5 miles past Uranus
or 1.4 miles from the sun
Pluto (1/22 " -- a pin point)
0.45 miles past Neptune
or 1.85 miles from the sun
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Have fun!
Sunday, August 09, 2015
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment