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After more than 600 hours of work, this model is finally finished. By using several scales, it enables us to fit the whole solar system into an area just 2.5m x 1m, and all folds up to fit in the back of the car. The planets, moons and asteroids consist of various sized balls covered with paper mache to build them to the appropriate scaled size. The planets and moons are scaled to 30million to one scale, which makes the Earth a convenient 400mm in diameter, unfortunately, the four largest planets are much too large to fit on the model (Jupiter would be 4.5 metres in diameter), and so they are reduced by a further 100 times. To fit the distances for moons into the model, they are also scaled down a further 100 times, so rather than being 12 metres away, the Moon becomes a much more convenient 120mm. Finally, the distances between the planets is reduced even further by a factor of 100,000 compared to their sizes. This reduces the Earth to Sun distance from about 4.8km to a more manageable 48mm. By thinking of each scale separately, students can see the relative sizes of planets, distances of their moons and distance from the Sun in one convenient location.
Due to the large amount of time required to build this model, it is not for the faint hearted, however, making some parts of the model would be a great school project. A number of people have visited my site and asked for information about how I made my model, and so I have now created a PDF document detailing how I created my model and some of the techniques I discovered to create some of the final effects, please feel free to download my instruction.
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