Scale: If you could walk around the earth
Suppose you made a map of the earth to the size of a city. The equatorial circumference of the Earth is 40,075 km. The length of Manhattan, or an average city like Edmonton, is about 21 km. This is a long walk for an average person, but most should be able to do it in a day.
If you laid a large map of the globe across such a city, the map scale would be 21:40075, or 1 to 1908.333 (repeating, of course). You can multiply this ratio by any map distance to find the equivalent distance on earth, or divide to do the reverse. For example, a big 1 m step taken in your city map would cover 1908 m on Earth, which is about half the length of Central Park (on your map, the park would be about the size of a tub). The distance from London to Paris is 343 km, which would be 180 m on your map. That's about the depth of the Met Museum of Art in real life.
Note: This ratio is actually only valid along the equator on the map, because the projection from sphere to plane will deform the map, but let's just pretend that the map was made in such a way that any of the distances we measure here share the same ratio.
By the way, the ratio also means that if you laid 1908 average cities side by side, they would circle the entire globe.
A map of Earth the size of a city.
Scale: 1 : 1908.3
| Measurement | Actual size | Size on map | About as big as... |
| Width of a house | 10 m | 5.2 mm | a pea |
| Height of CN Tower in Toronto | 553.3 m | 0.29 m | the height of a garden gnome |
| Height of Mount Everest | 8848 m | 4.637 m | the height of a house. Imagine a city the size of Manhattan with nothing taller than 1-story buildings. That's how relatively "flat" the Earth is. |
| Average city length | 21 km | 11 m | a house |
| Length of the equator | 40075 km | 21 km | a city, of course! |
| Diameter of the moon | 3475 km | 1.820 m | half the length of central park |
| Average distance to the moon | 384,403 km | 201 km | Long Island |
| Diameter of the sun | 1,391,000 km | 728.9 km | New York to Chicago; highway driving for 7 hours |
| 1 AU (Distance to sun) | 149,598,000 km | 78391 km | 6 Earths side by side |
| Distance to Proxima Centauri (nearest star to sun, 4.3 light-years) | 4.07×1013 km | 21,317,173,156 km | 142.5 AU... within the heliosheath of the solar system; 5x the distance from sun to Uranus |
Scale: The solar system in a ball park...
Suppose we have a park that is 60 m (just under 200 ft) from home plate to the outfield fence, and we want to build a scale model of the solar system with the sun at home plate and Neptune orbiting around where the fence is.
Home plate is 0.4318 m across, the pitching rubber is 18.44 m away, 1st base is 27.43 m away, and the outfield grass line is 47.40 m straight ahead.
Neptune orbits at about 30 AU, or 4.48794×1012 m.
Scale: 60 : 4.48794×1012 = 1 : 74799 million
| Measurement | Actual size | Size in ballpark model | About as big as... |
| Diameter of the sun | 1,391,000 km | 18.60 mm | a nickel |
| Diameter of Mercury | 4,879.4 km | 0.0652 mm | the width of a thin hair. All of the inner planets are like hairs of varying thickness. |
| Distance to Mercury | 59,839,200 km | 0.8 m | a big step |
| Venus | 12103.6 km | 0.1618 mm | |
| To Venus | 104,718,600 km | 1.4 m | a short person laying down |
| Earth | 12756.2 km | 0.1705 mm | |
| To Earth | 149,598,000 km | 2 m | width of a car. If you tape a nickel to a window and stand 2 m away from it, the coin should just eclipse the sun. Try this with the moon to be safe, if you're curious. The moon looks slightly (103%) bigger than the sun, on average. |
| Diameter of the moon | 3475 km | 0.0465 mm | |
| Average distance to the moon | 384,403 km | 5.14 mm | a pea |
| Mars | 6794 km | 0.0908 mm | |
| To Mars | 224,397,000 km | 3 m | |
| Distance to the Asteroid belt | 418,874,400 km | 5.6 m | a limousine |
| Jupiter | 142,984 km | 1.9116 mm | |
| To Jupiter | 777,909,600 km | 10.4 m | |
| Saturn | 120,536 km | 1.6115 mm | width of a grain of rice |
| To Saturn | 1,421,181,000 km | 19 m | just past the pitching rubber |
| Diameter of Saturn's main rings | 273,560 km | 3.66 mm | the width of 3 pennies |
| Saturn's new ring | 13,000,000 km | 173.8 mm | a cantaloupe. As seen from Earth (2 m from home plate), this should look twice as big as the moon or sun. |
| Uranus | 51,118 km | 0.6834 mm | Uranus is huge. |
| To Uranus | 2,932,120,800 km | 39.2 m | halfway between 2nd base and the outfield grass line |
| Neptune | 49,528 km | 0.6621 mm | |
| To Neptune | 4,487,940,000 km | 60 m | the park, to the outfield fence |
| Solar system bow shock | 34,407,540,000 km | 460 m | a few long city blocks |
| Distance to Proxima Centauri (nearest star to sun, 4.3 light-years) | 4.07×1013 km | 543 km | Toronto to Montreal. If it took us a year to get from the sun to Neptune's orbit, it would take 9064 years to get to the nearest star. |
| Diameter of Proxima Centauri | 201,695 km | 2.70 mm | a spitball |
| Size of the galaxy | 9.50×1017 km | 12,700,705 km | Size of Saturn's newly discovered rings. 33 times the average distance to the moon and a twelfth of the distance to the sun. |
In a model where the planets' orbits fit in a ball park, the galaxy fits in Saturn's "new" rings. The next time you make a model this big, have someone in another city 543 km away hold up a spitball, to represent the nearest star.
Scale: If the distance to the nearest star was the length of a house...
Length of house: 14 m
Distance to Proxima Centauri: 4.3 light-years = 4.07×1013 km
Scale: 1 : 2905733 billion
| Measurement | Actual size | Size in house model | About as big as... |
| Diameter of the sun | 1,391,000 km | 0.000479 mm | a bacteria cell. Though not visible to the naked eye, if it was very bright and seen from across a dark house, it would be a visible, single point of light, just like a star in the sky |
| Distance from sun to Earth | 149,598,000 km | 0.0515 mm | width of a thin hair |
| To Neptune | 4,487,940,000 km | 1.54 mm | width of a grain of rice |
| To bow shock | 34,407,540,000 km | 11.8 mm | a marble |
| Distance to Proxima Centauri (4.3 light-years) | 4.07×1013 km | 14 m | length of house |
| Size of the galaxy | 9.50×1017 km | 327 km | Distance from Edmonton to Calgary |
| Distance to nearest galaxy | 2.37×1017 km | 81.4 km | |
| Distance to Andromeda Galaxy (whose size is comparable to the Milky Way Galaxy) | 1.89×1019 km | 6512 km | Radius of Earth |
| Size of the visible universe | 4.40×1023 km | 151,395,348 km | Distance to the sun |
References: google, wikipedia
4 comments:
So, I didn't read this whole blog. But I liked your BBC Office reference! Uh... unless it was a reference to the actual joke, and not the part of the show where he tells the joke. Maybe you've never even see the show and don't even know what I'm talking about. Maybe I just keep *thinking* I get all your sly pop culture references when I really don't. Anyway. Forget it.
Hey, wait, it did post my original comment after all! (I had hit the Back button so I could change "see" to "seen"... you know how anal I am about that stuff...and I thought it made me lose the comment.) Now I have two posted comments that say virtually the same thing. I hate when that happens.
Hey, wait, it left my first and last comments, but not the one in the middle! That's OK... it was just a repeat of the first comment, and therefore kind of stupid. Maybe it knew how stupid it was and was trying to do me a favor. Computers can be really benevolent sometimes.
I like how this post has the most discussion and comments of any of the posts.
I uh :$ didn't realize I was referencing The Office. But I just looked it up. I guess I was referencing 20 Questions or What's My Line? Also... Leroy Jenkins.
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