Walk the Solar System

I've been going through the deepest darkest recesses of my computer and having a look at all the things I write and never show to anyone. Having a look at all the things I wrote years ago and thinking 'Hey, that's not too bad. I wonder why I thought it was so crap and wouldn't show anyone?' Having a look at letters I wrote and never sent.

I also found this: Solar System Walk. A year ago my husband and I took my son's class out to the park to do this. I worked out the relative sizes and the approximate number of steps for a walk of just over 600m. It's a seriously, seriously cool thing to do, especially with kids... but I'll tell you what, when we did it my husband, my son's teacher and I were all completely blown away by it as well. Unless you do something like this you have no concept of just how huge the solar system really is.

You will need:
11 popsicle sticks
11 small squares of paper. Each one glued onto one end of the popsicle sticks.
Pen, pencil, fine tipped coloured markers, coloured pencils
ruler

Now:
Download the Word doc and print out.
With your pens, pencils or markers draw one 'planet' (it includes the Sun and the asteroid belt) on each stick using the Walk measurements on the document. Make sure you write the name of the planet on it. For the Asteroid belt you can just draw some v v v tiny dots all over it. They are tiny so you can't use fat markers. You can just do it in pencil if you want, but with kids it's good to use different colours (the more senses they use when absorbing information the better).

Go to the park or a field, somewhere where you have a clear 700m to walk (I used a city map and worked out where in the park I could do it). Remember to take along the document.

Start the walk by sticking the Sun's popsicle stick in the ground. Notice how tiny the Sun is. Read out some facts about the Sun.
Now look at how many steps you'll need to take to get to Mercury. I measured out 2 steps per metre - fairly small steps.
When you get to Mercury stick the popsicle stick in the ground and again read out some facts about it.
Continue...

When we did it there were 10 of us in all so we all lined up tallest to smallest and assigned each person a planet. That child was in charge of that planet - putting the marker down, reading the information.

When we got to the Earth we pointed out that everyone and everything they knew was on that teeny, tiny dot.

We had a little snack at the Asteroid belt.

It was seriously cool.

If you want you can try and work out where, on this scale, you have to travel to to get to the next star, Proxima Centauri which is 4.2 light years away... We brought a little globe with us, worked out the direction our walk was heading (SE) and guessed that we'd have to travel to somewhere in Indonesia to get to the next star. I'm in London. Basically you have to travel about a third of the way around the Earth at this scale to get to the next planet.

Try it. It'll blow your mind.