Scale Model of the Solar System

You need

• 1 soccer ball for the Sun
• 1 bottlecap for Jupiter
• 1 marble for Saturn
• 2 kernels of popcorn for Uranus and Neptune
• 2 peppercorns for Earth and Venus
• 4 seed beads or straight pins for Mercury, Mars, Pluto, & the Moon

Next, get ready to pace this off. It does not do much good to just read this. You must walk the length of the solar system to really get the feel for it.

Place the sun down somewhere for starters and then take 10 paces (right foot to left foot about one yard) and place Mercury. Look back at the soccer ball. This is how big the sun will look from the surface of Mercury. Then we keep going 9 more paces and plop down a peppercorn for Venus. etc.

The whole plan looks like this:

• 10 paces - seed bead - Mercury
• 9 paces - peppercorn - Venus
• 7 paces - peppercorn - Earth (one thumbs length is the moon, a seed bead)
• 14 paces - seed bead - Mars
• 95 paces - bottle cap - Jupiter
• 112 paces - marble - Saturn
• 249 paces - popcorn - Uranus
• 281 paces - popcorn - Neptune
• 242 paces - seed bead - Pluto

Total Distance about 1000 yards - a little over half a mile. Look back at the soccer ball to see what the sun looks like from Pluto. Try to pick out the Earth.

Now if you've had a pleasant walk and you are interested in going on further we can mark out Proxima Centuri, the closest star to the sun. Grab another soccer ball and start walking. Proxima Centuri is roughly four thousand two hundred miles from where you are now. I hope you started your solar system map Somewhere in Europe or Asia because the continental US is only about three thousand miles across.

Enjoy!