Recently one of our Patriots built a scale model of the planets. She has graciously allowed me to share it with you.
With the help of her science teacher they calculated the size of each planet, then she found different size balls to represent each planet.
- Mercury – Small white marble
- Venus – Ping-pong ball painted brown/yellow
- Earth – Ping-pong ball painted green, blue and white
- Mars – Large marble painted red
- Jupiter – Exercise ball (not fully inflated)
- Saturn – Basketball (don’t forget the rings)
- Uranus – Soft ball painted light blue
- Neptune – Tennis ball painted blue
At this scale the sun would have a diameter of 14 feet (filling our meeting room).
The problem comes when you try to show the distance of the planets from the sun. At this ratio, Mercury is 176 yards away from the sun (this is longer than the length of a football field.
So if we were to shrink the sun again from the size of our room to the small white marble then we could measure the distances of the planets from the sun.
- Mercury – 6 inches from the sun
- Venus – 12 inches from the sun
- Earth – 19 inches from the sun
- Mars – 25 inches from the sun
- Jupiter – 38 inches from the sun
- Saturn – 3.8 yards from the sun
- Uranus – 7.2 yards from the sun
- Neptune – 29.3 yards from the sun
If you are looking for additional Space Exploration resources, check out these blog posts:
NOTE: The requirements have been simplified here. Please be sure to read the full text in the American Heritage Girl Handbook to make sure you fully understand the requirements.
