Creating a Model of the Solar System

Something I NEVER thought about: EVERY model of the solar system in books and concrete are not really to scale. It's really hard to explain to kids how far apart from each other some of the planets really are when they are inches apart on a page.

Then, another teacher at my school offered to do an awesome activity with my class. She found it here: http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html 

Here's what you need to represent each planet:

The Sun = A bowling ball

Mercury = A pin head

Venus = A peppercorn

Earth = A peppercorn

Mars = A pinhead

Jupiter = A chestnut or pecan

Saturn = A hazelnut or acorn

Uranus = A peanut or coffeebean

Neptune = A peanut or coffeebean

Most can be found at the grocery store or already in your kitchen. The hard part is creating the model. You need A LOT of space! We went into the fields behind our school on Monday because the weather was finally awesome. To get to each planet, you need to "pace" out your steps. For example, once we placed the bowling ball as the sun, we had to take 10 paces to get to Mercury. Here is a list of the distance between planets. 

Mercury = 10 yards (or paces)

Venus = 9 more paces

Earth = 7 more paces

Mars = 14 more paces

Jupiter = 95 more paces

Saturn = 112 more paces

Uranus = 249 more paces

Neptune = 242 final paces

After we counted out the distance, we place a card with the "planet" on the grass. 

(It was windy so we had to hold down our cards with sticks!)

 If you teach the solar system, I HIGHLY recommend this activity!