Steve Jasiecki/The Solar System Walk is back on the Ventnor boardwalk this year.
Submitted by STEVE JASIECKI
VENTNOR – By popular demand, the Solar System display is back on the boardwalk where people can learn a little about Earth’s place in the universe as they stroll the boards.
The Solar System Walk is a scaled representation of the solar system. Poster boards with fun facts representing each planet, including Pluto, and other astronomical wonders are placed at the appropriate scaled distance from the sun. QR codes have been added to the boards this year so people can access the internet and learn even more about the planets. Be sure to check out a QR code when you are on the boards.
Descriptive boards about the planets are spaced in proportion on a 1-inch to 100,000-mile scale.
The scale of the walk is one-inch equals 100,000 miles. At this scale, the sun is the size of a soccer ball, about 8-1/2 inches, and the Earth is the size of a peppercorn, about 3/16 of an inch. The 93 million miles from the Earth to the Sun is reduced to just 73 feet.
Another interesting fact is that it takes about 8 minutes for sunlight to reach Earth. In the scaled down version, you can walk that distance in about 8 seconds, meaning you will be traveling faster than the speed of light.
Earth in relation to the size of the Sun.
The self-guided tour starts at the Sun on the boardwalk behind the Ventnor Community Center between New Haven and Newport avenues, and heads towards Atlantic City, ending with Pluto at Oxford Avenue. Boardwalk strollers can walk the 3.6 billion miles from the Sun to Pluto in just a half-mile.
Walkers will notice that the farther you get from the sun, the distance between the planets increases. There is a lot of space between the planets. Hence the term, “space.”
The Sustainable Downbeach Team along with NASA Solar System Ambassador Michelle Stella Riordan created the display to give people a better understanding of the vastness of space and to present a more accurate scale of the Solar System – something that cannot be shown in a drawling or textbook.
The sun is 184,000 miles in diameter. At a scale of 1 inch equaling 100,000 miles, the sun will be slightly more than 8-1/2 inches in diameter.
The size ratio of the planets are Mercury, a pinhead; Venus, a peppercorn; Earth, a peppercorn; Mars, a pinhead; Jupiter, a chestnut; Saturn, an acorn; Uranus, a coffee bean; Neptune, a coffee bean; and Pluto, smaller then a pinhead.
For more information, please contact Michelle Stella Riordan at michelle.stella.394@gmail.com.
