The Table to the left contains the data that you will need to perform the follow

Question

The Table to the left contains the data that you will need to perform the following assignment. You are a teacher doing a lesson on astronomy in 4th grade. You want to give your students an appreciation for the size of the solar system. The principal gives you permission to use the entire length of the central hallway in your school, which is 60 meters long. That's the maximum distance that you have to work with. So, in order to scale the the distance between each planet and the sun, and also to scale the diameters of the planets so that the whole thing is the same proportion as the real solar system, you will have to determine a conversion factor that will make Neptune, the most distance planet, no more that 60 meters from the Sun. (Keep in mind that the units in the Table are in kilometers, and the hallway is in meters.) In other words, this assignment is to create a model of the solar system that has the same proportions as the real solar system, but will fit in a 60 meter-long hallway. You only need the data in Column B and C. The rest in irrelevant for this assignment. This is a scaling problem and this one reason why scaling is important. Once you have determined the conversion factor that will accurately scale the real solar system distances to your hallway, calculate the scaled distance and the scaled diameter so that your solar system fits in the hallway. In column F, suggest an item or object that may work as a substitute for the Sun and planets for your model solar system. This assignment is worth 20 points.

SHOW ALL WORK, especially how you derive you conversion factor.

NOTE: Don't forget that whatever conversion factor you compute has to be applied not only to the distance but to the diameters too, o even the sun is going to be really small on this scale and Mercury is so tiny that it'll be hard finding an object that you would use to represent it

NOTE: EVERYTHING IS SOLVED EXCEPT THE OBJECT OR ITEM, THATS THE ONLY THING LEFT TO ANSWER

Name of Planet Average Distance from Sun Diameter Scaled Distance Scaled Diameter Object or Item Sun 0 1,392,000km 0 0.01847 Mercury 57,900,000 km (36,000,000 miles) 4878 km (3,031 miles) 0.7725 0.000065 Venus 108,160,000 km (67,000,000 miles) 12,104 km (7,926 miles) 1.44 0.00016 Earth 149,600,000 km (92,960,000 miles) 12,756 km (7,926 miles) 1.99 0.00017 Mars 227,936,640 km (141,700,000 miles) 6,794 km (4,22 miles) 3.04 0.00009 Jupiter 778,369,000 km (483,500,000 miles) 142,984 km (88,846 miles) 10.38 0.0019 Saturn 1,427,034,000 km (888,750,000 miles) 120,536 km (74,900 miles) 19.03 0.0016 Uranus 2,870,658,186 km (1,783,744,300 miles) 51,118 km (31,763 miles) 36.3 0.00068 Neptune 4,496,976,000 km (2,797,770,000 miles) 49,532 km (30,779 miles) 60 0.00066

Explanation / Answer

Sun: Penny size object

Mercury: The tip of the needle

Venus: The thickness of human hair

Earth: The thickness of human hair

Mars: The thickness of A4 paper

Jupiter: The thickness of penny

Saturn: The thickness of penny

Uranus: The diameter of pencil lid

Neptune: The diameter of pencil lid

Here the same object is used twice somewhere because the size difference is so small that the change in respective size is negligible.

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