[lisper]

Cool!

I once designed a scale model of the solar system for an elementary school class. The sun was a ping-pong ball. At this scale, earth is about three meters from the sun, and Pluto is a hundred meters away. Both earth and pluto at this scale are too small to see with the naked eye.

[nostrademons]

I did the NSF Young Scholars Program at MIT Haystack observatory the summer after 8th grade, and one of the events was a scale model of the solar system. The sun was a basketball, Jupiter was a golf ball, Saturn was one of those little rubber bouncy balls, and all the inner planets were grains of sand chosen to mimic their colors and relative sizes. Jupiter was off at the end of the parking lot, Saturn was in the grass at the edge of the site, and Uranus/Neptune/Pluto were omitted for lack of space.