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• Talk about what a solar system model that demonstrates the relative average distances between the planets and the Sun and the relative sizes of the planets would look like. Save your Solar System Statistics cards for future activities.
Sun is scaled one meter (39") in diameter. Actual Size of Sun: 1,391,000 km (864,000 mi) AU (“Astronomical Unit”) is the average distance between the Sun and Earth: 150 million km (93 million mi) A little more than 100 Sun diameters will span the distance of one AU.
This is a simple little model to give you an overview of the distances between the orbits of the planets and other objects in our Solar System. Provide a quick, easy-to-make and remember scale of the approx distances of the planetʼs orbits and orbital distance of other realms (asteroids, Kuiper Belt) from the Sun.
distance scale 1 cm : 1 astronomical unit (note the mention of lower-case) or 149,597,870.7 km. Provide a simple ruler, a pencil, and an example, and have students make their own to take home. Tape the information onto the back of the sheet, for those who want to keep the actual numbers.
Download the Scale Distance spreadsheet (XLSX or CSV). Create a formula in your spreadsheet that will calculate the distance from the Sun to each planet (in centimeters) in your model. The formula should multiply the AU value by the number of centimeters you want each AU to represent, your scale value.
Although we could print the planet sizes to scale, the paper would need to be way too large to show the scaled distances. Instead, to help you understand the sizes and distances of our solar system, we’ve created a scale model. Our Solar System, real imagery but not to scale.
Grades: 6-12. Subject: Space Science. Purpose: Students create a scale model of planetary distances in the solar system. It is a good way to demonstrate the vast distances among the outer planets and to apply math skills in proportion.