The sun’s diameter would be over 5 feet! 66 inches to be exact. :) I actually made a whole post about it here: https://researchparent.com/relative-size-of-the-sun-activity/

Thank you so so much for your amazing work!

That is a great idea! I have not made a black and white version of this document, but I can think about doing that when I have some free time. Are you able to print in grey scale?

I’m glad to hear she’s been amazed by science. I am too. :)

That’s amazing, I think you’re right that this would make it tricky to show the online class!! Thanks so much for this information, the girl child is wide eyed that the sun would be that large compared to earth, and that Neptune would be in the next town :)

Hi Christopher! I don’t guarantee that this is accurate, because I haven’t triple checked my numbers, but I just did a calculation based on some numbers off Google. For planets the size that I made them, the sun should have about a 33″ or 0.84 meter radius. I have a post on that here: https://researchparent.com/relative-size-of-the-sun-activity/ Given a sun that size, I think Mercury (the closest planet) should be between 55 and 84 meters away depending on which part of its orbit it is in. The 55 m would be at the perihelion and the 84 meters would be at the aphelion. The farthest planet, Neptune, would be roughly 5.4 km away, so this wouldn’t make a great visual demonstration using my scaled planets. If you would like the rest of the numbers, let me know. Basically, the conclusion is that there is a lot of space between the planets! My kids and I read a book recently (The Mysteries of the Universe by Bill Gator) that said that you can fit all the planets in the space between the Earth and the moon. Crazy to think about!