Dear Jim,
on 2002/02/15 16.16, James R. Frysinger at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
<snip>
> Might I suggest a homemade page on building solar system models? One
> would be orbit spacing and one would be planatary sizes. Even separating
> those two things makes for strange differences between largest and
> smallest, but actually that's one of the points that ought to be brought
> out. It is unreasonable to do both in one model. Either it would be the
> size of a small town or Mercury would be invisible.
You are right. It does take the size of a small town. The town that I chose
for my model was Orbost in eastern Victoria in south-eastern Australia.
I used a scale of 10�000 000 000:1 and my model measured 590 metres from the
Sun to Pluto. I used the same scale for both the interplanetary distances
and for the planet diameters, so the dimensions were as follows:
distance diameter notes
Sun 0 150 mm I used a softball painted yellow
Mercury 5.8 m 0.5 mm I used a piece of lead shot
Venus 10.8 m 1.2 mm I used a small ball bearing
Earth 15 m 1.3 I used a small ball bearing
Mars 22.8 m 0.7 mm Lead shot
Jupiter 77.8 m 14.3 mm Childs glass marble with red spot
Saturn 142.7 m 12 mm Childs glass marble - plastic rings
Uranus 287 m 5.2 mm Ball bearing
Neptune 450 m 5 mm Ball bearing
Pluto 590 m 0.3 mm Lead shot
Each of the model planets were mounted on a tin-plate document holder that I
had made to hold 'fact sheets' on the reverse side. The background for each
planet was flat black to suggest space and I tried to give color (red for
mars, blue for Earth, red spot for Jupiter etc.) to the planets as
appropriate (and convenient).
The positions of the model planets were marked on a farmer's roadside fence
near the Orbost High School and the model could be removed if required for
safety from kids, sheep, dogs, and the elements.
The kids who got to 'hang out' the model learned the most - 'It's a long way
to Pluto and back', they informed me on a hot sunny afternoon.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
CAMS - Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist
- United States Metric Association
ASM - Accredited Speaking Member
- National Speakers Association of Australia
Member, International Federation for Professional Speakers
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