A Model Based On A Sports Field
Relating the size of the Solar System to familiar objects can make it easier for students to grasp the relative distances. Most American schools have a football field associated with the high school (100 yards or 92 meters long). Other schools may have a soccer field nearby (90 to 120 m long). If the Sun was reduced to slightly less than one inch (21 mm), Pluto would be a 0.002 inch (0.05 mm) speck floating 100 yards (91.4 meters) away. Jupiter would be less than three-thirty-secondths of an inch (2.38 mm) in diameter and would sit on the 13 yd (11.88 m) line. Uranus would be less than one-thirty-secondth of an inch (0.79 mm) sitting nearly on the 50 yd (45.72 m) line. At that scale, the speed of light would be about 1 inch every 5 seconds (5 mm per second). Light takes about 5.5 hours to go from the Sun to Pluto. Here is what the Solar System built to that scale would look like. This complete model would be simple to make with scale planets taped to wood stakes or metal rods. The scale is approximately 1:64 700 000 000.
| Body | Diameter | Semi-major axis |
|---|---|---|
| Sun | 0.85 in (21.5 mm) | zero |
| Mercury | 0.003 in (0.08 mm) | 1.0 yd (0.9 m) |
| Venus | 0.007 in (0.19 mm) | 1.9 yd (1.7 m) |
| Earth | 0.008 in (0.20 mm) | 2.5 yd (2.3 m) |
| Mars | 0.004 in (0.10 mm) | 3.8 yd (3.5 m) |
| Ceres | 0.001 in (0.02 mm) | 7.0 yd (6.4 m) |
| Jupiter | 0.085 in (2.16 mm) | 13.1 yd (12.0 m) |
| Saturn | 0.071 in (1.8 mm) | 24.2 yd (22.1 m) |
| Uranus | 0.029 in (0.73 mm) | 48.6 yd (44.4 m) |
| Neptune | 0.028 in (0.7 mm) | 76.1 yd (69.6 m) |
| Pluto | 0.002 in (0.05 mm) | 100.0 yd (91.4 m) |
| Eris | 0.002 in (0.05 mm) | 171.4 yd (156.7 m) |
| α Centauri A | 0.94 in (23.9 mm) | 396 mi (637 km) |
Read more about this topic: Solar System Model
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“Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them.”
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