Interesting! I will definitely be sharing this with my daughter. Crazy that at a one-to-32 billion scale the distances are still so huge.
shaiyft on
The times are not based on the objects real distance. It’s off based on the distances I got from this scale. I was trying to get smaller numbers so someone who doesn’t know much about the topic can understand. From my experience it’s easier to show someone new to this topic, a scale similar to this first instead of saying gigantic numbers that goes right over peoples heads. If there is anything incorrect about this please let me know I’m not trying to spread misinformation.
Wheeljack7799 on
Really put things into perspective, huh?
What really baffles the mind are the distances we’re capable of understanding. Andromeda being 2,5 million lightyears away is just… a big number. We read the numbers and know what they mean, but we don’t really grasp them. Same goes for the golf-ball example. 735 million km is roughly five times the distance from the earth to the sun.
Using the scale of the golf ball, the distance to the edge of the solar system is about the same as between Las Vegas and Phoenix or London to Amsterdam. That’s quite the distance for a golf ball. But its a distance we can get some sense of – even in terms of an object small enough to fit in your pocket.
squirrelgator on
I have always wanted to see a scale model of the solar system where the speed of a photon leaving the sun would be equivalent to a car going 60 MPH. It would be built in the median of a freeway, so the Earth would be about 8-1/3 miles away from the sun and about 45 inches in diameter. Neptune would be 250 miles away and over 14 feet in diameter.
Metahec on
I did something similar with the solar system (Neptune’s orbit) 1 meter in diameter (or about the size of my dining room table). IIRC, the sun would have been a crumb .2mm in diameter, Jupiter about a tenth of that and the Earth about a tenth of that, or dust motes so small you wouldn’t see them. Nearby star systems like Barnard’s Star and Proxima Centauri would be dining room tables a few kilometers away.
July_is_cool on
Every school should have a model like this on the wall in the hallway. With a golf-ball sized Sun, you can fit in the inner planets. Easy project for middle school science classes.
6 Comments
Interesting! I will definitely be sharing this with my daughter. Crazy that at a one-to-32 billion scale the distances are still so huge.
The times are not based on the objects real distance. It’s off based on the distances I got from this scale. I was trying to get smaller numbers so someone who doesn’t know much about the topic can understand. From my experience it’s easier to show someone new to this topic, a scale similar to this first instead of saying gigantic numbers that goes right over peoples heads. If there is anything incorrect about this please let me know I’m not trying to spread misinformation.
Really put things into perspective, huh?
What really baffles the mind are the distances we’re capable of understanding. Andromeda being 2,5 million lightyears away is just… a big number. We read the numbers and know what they mean, but we don’t really grasp them. Same goes for the golf-ball example. 735 million km is roughly five times the distance from the earth to the sun.
Using the scale of the golf ball, the distance to the edge of the solar system is about the same as between Las Vegas and Phoenix or London to Amsterdam. That’s quite the distance for a golf ball. But its a distance we can get some sense of – even in terms of an object small enough to fit in your pocket.
I have always wanted to see a scale model of the solar system where the speed of a photon leaving the sun would be equivalent to a car going 60 MPH. It would be built in the median of a freeway, so the Earth would be about 8-1/3 miles away from the sun and about 45 inches in diameter. Neptune would be 250 miles away and over 14 feet in diameter.
I did something similar with the solar system (Neptune’s orbit) 1 meter in diameter (or about the size of my dining room table). IIRC, the sun would have been a crumb .2mm in diameter, Jupiter about a tenth of that and the Earth about a tenth of that, or dust motes so small you wouldn’t see them. Nearby star systems like Barnard’s Star and Proxima Centauri would be dining room tables a few kilometers away.
Every school should have a model like this on the wall in the hallway. With a golf-ball sized Sun, you can fit in the inner planets. Easy project for middle school science classes.