Scale Model Solar Systems.
Now that you have a handle on the scale sizes of our Sun and the planets, let's move on to including distances...
Picture an American football field. It's 300 feet from one goal line to the other.
With the Sun on one goal line and Pluto on the other, can you guess how big the Sun would be?
Go ahead and guess before you scroll down...
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In a scale model of our solar system with the Sun on goal line and Pluto on the other, our Sun would be this big:
That is .85 inches; the size of a typical marble. Bounce back to the size scales and you'll probably guess correctly...that Pluto would be microscopic.
And on this scale, Jupiter, our largest planet, would be about half the size of a BB:
...and Earth would be about the size of this period:
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Now let's put them where they go in this scale model.
With the Sun on one goal line and Pluto on the other, can you guess where Earth would be?
C'mon...go ahead and guess before you scroll down.
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In this scale model, Earth would be just 7.5 feet from the Sun...just past the 2 yard line.
Get a good picture in your mind of this scale model: The marble sized Sun
on the one goal line, Earth as big as a period just past the two yard line and the microscopic Pluto on the other goal line.
Where's Jupiter?
Jupiter would be a bit more than 39 feet from the Sun: Just past the 13 yard line.
A bit difficult to get the brain around, isn't it?
You may know that the nearest Star to us is Alpha Centauri. With our solar system in this football field sized scale model, can you guess how far away Alpha Centauri would be?
Go ahead and guess before looking at the answer.
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In this scale model, with the sun on one goal line of a football field and Pluto on the other, Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our own Sun, would be 360 miles away.
Since we cannot see the planets of our solar system in our mind, in the above scale model, due to their tiny sizes, let's kick it up a notch so that we can envision it a bit better. Click here.
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