1. You are helping a middle school student create a scale model of the solar system. The student decides to use a radius of 12 cm as the radius of the sun.
(a) What would the radii of each of the eight planets and Pluto be using this model?
Can anybody even explain to me how to begin this problem? Please?
where are you going to plot planet x?
Poor 'ole Pluto. Can't even be called a planet anymore. :(
guyinrace wrote:
where are you going to plot planet x?
This is the exact wording of the question, and I'm obviously not going to help someone ake a scale model. I'm jsut wondering how to set up the problem cuz im terrible at math.
If this is going to be a scale model, lets find some facts...
If 12cm is used as the sun radius (radius of the sun = 695,500 kilometers... lets just call it 700,000km), the Earth which is 1 Astronomical Unit (149,598,000km) would be about 150,000,000/700,000 = ~215. 215 times 12cm = 2580cm or 84 feet away.
A better way (IMO, of course) to do this would be to throw out the accuracy of the planet/sun sizes and just worry about distance from the sun. If you say the distance from the Sun to the Earth is 1 AU and have THAT be 12cm, you can scale all the rest once you find out how far each of the other planets are from the sun (using this page for example:
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/kids_space/distance.html
)
So, if 1 AU = 12 cm, and it says Saturn is 9.5 AU away from the Sun. that means Saturn should be placed 9.5 times 12 = 114 cm away. Still way too far for a model!
If nothing else, I hope the link I provided will help.
If you just need to know the radius, don't worry about all the stuff in the previous post, although it would be important if you were actually making it.
You need to find the actual radius of the sun and find the factor by which it was multiplied to get 12cm. Then apply that same factor to all of the planets (and Pluto).
For example, if the sun really had a radius of 1000 miles, your ratio would be (12/1000)=0.012. You don't have to worry about units because they will cancel out.
So then, you would take that factor of 0.012 and multiply it by the radius - in the same units - of all of the planets.
So, if Earth had a radius of 200 miles, your answer would be:
200*0.012=2.4 cm
Hope this helps.
Okay, the stuff in the previous post IS imporants... I missed the "to scale" part on the original post. The same ideas apply... you need to figure out how ratios work.
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