Paul Floyd's Astronomy & Space Website: Make Your Own Solar System Scale Model

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Make Your Own Solar System Scale Model

I put together the below activity as a fun way of showing how big the distances between the planets in our Solar System are. I took great pain in making sure the planets and the Sun are shown at their correct scaled size. The scale of the model is 1m = 118 million k.m..

An optional extra is to find a piece of rope (dimensions given below) which shows you how big comets can be. Comets are the giants of the Solar System. They have been known to exceed one million kilometers in diameter with a tail 150 million kilometers long - greater than the distance between the Sun and the Earth!

Material required

50 meters of string
Scissors
Sticky tape
Tags with planets shown correctly scaled (when visible)
Metre ruler
30cm ruler
Optional: Contact for protecting labels
Optional: Rope 1 cm in diameter by 1.28 meters long

Making the Solar System

Unroll the 50 meter length of string.
Attach the Sun tag to one end of the piece of string. Note that the Sun tag (and all the other planet tags
Attach the planet tags in correct order and distance from the Sun.
You are finished! When you have finished going "Wow! We are so small!" you may want to use an old cardboard tube to carefully roll the string around. Speaking from experience, it will mean you are less likely to have a mess the next time you unroll the model.

Background information

	Size at calculated scale (Scale: 1m = 118 million k.m.)	Distance from Sun	Real life distance (Millions of kilometers)
Sun	1.2 cm	N / A	N / A
Mercury	Too small to see	49 cm	57.9
Venus	Too small to see	92 cm	108.2
Earth	Too small to see	1.27 m	149.6
Mars	Too small to see	1.93 m	227.9
Jupiter	1.2 mm	6.6 m	778.3
Saturn	1 mm	12.1 m	1,429
Uranus	0.4 mm	23.36 m	2,875
Neptune	0.4 mm	38.17 m	4,504
(Dwarf Planet) Pluto	Too small to see	50 m	5900