I’m looking for a model of the 8 planets and earth’s moon where the sizes of the planets are TO SCALE. I’ve searched Amazon and haven’t found any to scale.
I realize there is a big difference in sizes, which is what is making finding this hard. But my purpose is to be able to visually illustrate the difference in size.
Caveats:
Note that I didn’t include the sun, since it is so much larger that it would dwarf any comparison of planet sizes.
Note also that I’m not asking to model the distance between the planets for the same reason.
It’s basically grains of colored sand glued together. I guess it’s “natural” in the sense that it’s not supernatural; I’m not sure what else they would mean by that word. Last I checked, it’s the only printing option Shapeways has that allows for more than one color on a model, so for any other printing option, you’d be paying a couple of hundred bucks just for some various-sized balls.
You’d probably still be much better off just finding some existing balls of appropriate sizes, and if you really want the imagery, put it on a vinyl wrap or something you can cover the balls with.
A couple years ago, my then-10-year-old son and I followed the instructions for doing this, from this terrific 1994 book:
It was something like a tennis ball for the sun on the sidewalk in front of our house; a grain of coarse sea salt for Mercury a couple houses down; a peppercorn for Venus in the next block down the street; another peppercorn for the Earth (and another grain of sea salt for its moon) another block and a half down; and I think that’s when we stopped, though we could have used a marble for Jupiter another quarter-mile away…
I’m not remembering the distances exactly, but it was a good lesson for both of us about how far apart these mothers are.
Pluto forever! 