Accurate* Model of the Solar System

Have you ever wanted a perfectly accurate yet, aesthetically pleasing model of the wonderful solar system that we all live in? Well you can't because the Solar System is too out of proportionately massive. In fact, If you had a model to the scale of which Earth's diameter was only half a centimeter, the solar system would be 37 miles across only counting up to Neptune. And unless your house is the size of the entirety of Rhode island, you can't fit an accurate model. And if you had a model to the scale of which the Earth's diameter was half the diameter of two Earth diameters, then you would have the actual Solar System and you would probably no longer exist. The sheer size of The Solar System is incomprehensible, much less galaxies and the Universe itself. A really good model of just how dispropotionalty massive The Solar System really is, is this digital model by Josh Worth. Now this Instructable won't be perfect but it's the best representation of our Solar System I could muster without collapsing the world or my mind.

Materials:

1. Clay (we used 226 grams of Crayola Model Magic)
2. Thin metal rods
3. Balsa Wood Sticks (other sticks would work too, just make sure you could poke a hole through it with pins)
4. Paper (at least 109 times the size of your scaled Earth)
5. Pins, one for each celestial body we're going to add
6. Tape

Tools:

1. Wire clippers
2. Markers (colors of the solar system)
3. Wood stick cutter
4. Markers
5. Ruler (meter stick or yard stick)

We'll try to use the Earth as the central measurement for this Instructable. You should use either Neptune or the Earth as they are the closest to as average of a planet as can be. I put the measurements that we used for everything so that if you're too lazy to calculate everything, you could just do exactly as we show.

The planets are really small (especially the lil' rocky ones) and the Sun puts everything else out of proportion. So that the Earth's diameter is 1/2 a cm, the scale we used was every real 25512 km= 1 cm in the model for the planets.

The rocky planets are really close to The Sun and Neptune's distance puts everything else out of proportion. Even if you make the planets and Sun decently small—the scale we did is 1 Earth diameter=1/2 cm—the entire model would be still too large—ours would've been 1.8 km only counting up to Neptune—so this scale should be a different, far larger planet to model ratio. The scale we used was every real 75,000,000 km= 1 cm in the model for the orbits.

You can find the sizes and distances by either:

1. Spending a few class periods making a spreadsheet with the different sizes and conversions of the different celestial bodies then writing them all down making the spreadsheet convert each one individually
2. Use Chatgpt

Cut the balls to the accurate sizes calculated above. If you want dwarf planets or more, make sure to also take their minuscule sizes into account.

Dimensions we used in this Instructable:

Diameters-

1. Mercury- 0.19 cm
2. Venus- 0.47 cm
3. Earth- 0.50 cm
4. Mars- 0.27
5. Jupiter- 5.49
6. Saturn- 4.57
7. Uranus- 1.99
8. Neptune- 1.93 cm

Next color the balls. You can easily do this by stabbing the clay with markers. Then mush and mix the colors into the clay. You could alternatively paint or just marker the outside layer but it's far more difficult to fix if it flattens while drying or forms cracks.

Lastly mold them together.

You can also add zones and belts by drawing lines and not fully incorporating the colors into the ball when remolding it.

You could also do that by just drawing lines over the clay. Use this way of coloring to detail the earth. Just make sure to draw the borders better than the colonialists did.

When drying them, I suggest you put it on a wet paper towel or else they may crack.

The Sun is big. Really annoyingly big. It's big enough to fit 1.3 million Earths in its massive volume. To put that into perspective, if the Earth was the size of the sun, it would fit 1.69 quintillion elephants in its volume. That's 1.3 million Earths made of another 1.3 trillion elephants, and a very horrifying sight for those aboard the ISS.

So to make the sun there's only a few options. You could make a ball the with a diameter of 109 times that of your Earth model or to just cut a sheet of paper 109 times the diameter of our Earth model into a circle and pin all other planets to that as the center. Then build a wooden frame by taping some sticks to it.

Dimensions we used in this Instructable:

Sun-

1. 54.6 diameter
2. 27.3 radius

spray paint the sun

Find the radius of your "Sun" Then add that into the distances from the sun that you found. Save this number for later. Then go back to the distances you calculated earlier on in step one, and remember your these distances should be in a different scale from your planets unless you aim to make the rocky planets absolutely microscopic. Lastly add that length to that of the radius' length. This will be your how you will find every planets' "orbit".

These are the length of the wooden balsa sticks that you're going to cut using the wood chopper.

Afterwards, use the tape to add metal rods that reinforce the sticks. This way the heavier planets that will sit on top won't snap the "orbits". Use the wire clippers to trim as needed.

If you wanted to make dwarf planets, I suggest you don't because even in our scale of 1 Earth = 1/2 cm, Eris (the furthest official dwarf planet) would be 1.92 meters away and that's like absurd for a model meant for indoors keeping.

Dimensions we used in this Instructable:

1. Mercury- 0.77 cm+26= 26.77 cm
2. Venus- 1.44 cm+26= 27.44 cm
3. Earth- 2.00 cm+26= 28 cm
4. Mars- 3.04 cm+26= 29.04 cm
5. Jupiter- 10.38 cm+26= 36.38 cm
6. Saturn- 19.11 cm+26= 33.52 cm
7. Uranus- 38.30 cm+26= 64.3 cm
8. Neptune- 59.93 cm+26= 85.93 cm

Now that you have the separate planets and "orbits" completed, now we just need to connect them.

Poke the pins through the balsa wood sticks on one end. Then put the planets into the pins.

Lastly, get one decently long pin and poke all the other ends of the "orbits" through that and secure the solar system.

There you have it, a very accurate and not scuffed model of our solar system, perfect for a school project about making The Solar System.

*not actually perfectly accurate