Document Type

Other

Publication Date

2026

Abstract

It is important to develop a sense of the scale of things – how big, how far, how much, how little as well as relative relations such as bigger or smaller, older or newer, hotter or colder. Astronomy is a great place to help develop a sense of scale. The problem is that distances and sizes are so huge (many powers of ten) that the values are unfamiliar. To help develop a sense of relative sizes it is often helpful to use scale models. Unfortunately, because planets are so much smaller than their distances to the sun that books and images often use different scales to represent the sizes and distances of planets which can lead to learners thinking the planets are bigger than they are compared to their distances to the sun or to other planets. An instructor must be very careful to avoid such misunderstandings and some tools to help avoid this situation is a part of this activity.


This activity is based on Guy Ortwell’s Earth as a Peppercorn scale that he published in 2016 (https://www.universalworkshop.com/). It uses his scale of a peppercorn for the Earth’s diameter and a second scale for AU’s based on the possible areas available for the distances between planets (a classroom, middle school gym, high school gym or a football/soccer field)

Publisher

South Dakota State University

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