Cookie Policy

Our website uses cookies to understand content and feature usage to drive site improvements over time. To learn more, review our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

To Scale: The Solar System

To Scale: The Solar System

If the Sun is a huge beach ball and the Earth is a little marble, how far apart should they be if you are making a true scale model of the Solar System?

Key Ideas

As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.

Key Ideas

Think about the following questions as you watch the video


  1. 00:59 Why aren’t pictures of the Solar System to scale?
  2. 01:53 How much space do you need to build a scale model of the Solar System if the Earth is only the size of a marble?
  3. 04:15 What planet orbits at the edge of the Solar System?
  4. 05:22 How do you know that they’ve made their model correctly, with the right proportions?