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I love the stars and the universe and the moon and the planets...and the list goes on. How knowledgable am I about them, well, thats a different story? I'm a distinct amateur, in fact that might be insulting to those who are real amateurs. I know nothing in reality, but I gather bits and pieces and eventually I can at least talk a good game (thanks Prof Brian Cox & Dara OBriain)

Ellis, my 9 year old son, now has a fascination with the solar system and its make up. We watched the Stargazing LIVE model of using fruit and toilet paper but I have to say that it left me thinking that the solar system just wouldn't fit that neatly in a field...and it doesn't. So, we conducted the following exercise to try and explain the Solar System and its relative sizes, but I found that instead of it blowing Ellis' mind, it blew mine. So here we go...

"Ellis, do you remember the 3 metre swimming pool we had up in the garden last year?"

"Yes Dad"

"Well if THAT was the actual size of The Sun, 3 metres in diameter (10 feet), how big would the planets be and where would they be?"

"I don't know Dad. How big are they and where are they?"

Brace yourself.

OK, lets suppose that the swimming pool in my back garden is the The 'real' Sun. Now, Mercury is really hot and burnt so it must be in the flower bed in the corner right? Wrong! Mercury, to scale, is 11mm across, about the size of a shirt button and instead of being still inside my Garden, its orbit is over 1 kilometre away somewhere near Ellis' Grandparents house. WOW! I was getting lost here because that just didn't seem right. But I checked the figures and gave them to Dr Happy Mac to check and he agreed, it really is 1KM

"What about Venus then Ellis?"

"Dunno"

"Venus is the size of a 10 pence piece, about 23mm across and its orbit is somewhere near your school which is 2.3km away". We are both jaw-dropped by this fact and struggling to match the sizes with the distances.

"Earth's Next Dad" says Ellis, "Where's that?"

"Well done mate. Earth is the size of a Two Pence Piece mate and its at Our Rugby Club which is 2.7km away from our house"

"So a taxi from Earth to The Sun when your drunk Dad, only costs £5?" Erm...

"Mars is next Ellis. Have a guess then?" Ellis looks blankly at me and I have to say I'm feeling pretty blank already myself.

"Mars is the size of a Five Pence Piece and its orbit is roughly 4.4KM away, which is another 2 villages to the west of where we live mate" WOW! Ellis is now silent and says nothing for the rest of the conversation.

"Jupiter is next mate and it is a LOT bigger and a LOT further away. In fact, Jupiter is the size of our Biggest Frying Pan (30cm) and its orbit is 16KM away deep into the Warwickshire Countryside.

"Saturn is HUGE too. Its the size of a football (26cm) and orbits at 29KM away from our house". At this point, I am struggling not because of the distances but because we don't anyone who lives 29km away from our house, so Ellis is now completely lost. I too am completely lost as because I'm old, I have no comprehension of Kilometres, only Miles

Uranus and Neptune are close enough in size to use the same household object, a Blu-Ray Disc, but when I say to Ellis that they are 60km and 96km away we are both in hysterics as he can't get it and I can't explain it. Finally, we talk about Pluto (I know its not a planet) but its big enough to notice and its only 6mm across, the size of a pencil in diameter and orbits at up to 99km from our house. We have fun, but I'm not sure how much either of us learnt.

So, next time you think that you're somebody important, remember that the planet you are falling on is a Two Pence Piece, 2 miles away from the Sun and The Sun is only 10 feet wide and is a swimming pool...oh, sorry, multiplied by 463,667,000

The moral of the tale, isn't about the size of the Solar System nor the planets, its that you should be nice to the person next to you...because you're SO small that you just might need them one day.

Ewen

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Ewen Rankin

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