Good evening, Kibitzers!
It’s midsummer, and my fridge is full of fresh produce. With any luck, by the time this posts, a lot of it will have gotten cooked and/or frozen, because if not, it’s going to be next weekend before I have that kind of time again.
But I can’t not buy it! It’s so lovely and tasty! (I guess I could retire, to have more time, but then I could probably not afford enough fresh produce to burn up a lot of preparation time.) Alas. First world problems: boo hoo, I don’t have enough spare time to cook all the agricultural bounty my white-collar job allows me to buy! (Somewhere, my Sicilian grandma is smiling and saying, My grandchildren are REAL AMERICANS!)
As you might have gathered, I’ve swapped days with side pocket again, so he can gallivant off to another concert. He will join you on Tuesday.
Needing a quick idea, I turned to the diary I posted this morning for The Inoculation Project (which might interest you if you don’t already know what it is). One of our teachers was asking for a solar-system-related activities kit, and I found a video to illustrate.
A couple of young filmmakers, with the excellent names Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh, were taken with the quote from Apollo 15 astronaut Jim Irwin comparing the earth to “the most beautiful marble you can imagine”. But they realized that, if the earth is scaled to marble size, a to-scale diagram of the solar system has never appeared on a page, and never will. They decided to build one in the Nevada desert. [7:06]
They added a little “making of” video to show some of their behind-the-scenes struggles. [3:24]
This diary is about to-scale solar systems, but since the “To Scale” folks have only two more videos on their channel, allow me to digress and insert them here, because they’re good.
In this one, they drag their giant-ass telescope around the streets of Los Angeles and invite people to look at the moon. The good news is, most adults just have no idea, and if you show them, they’re amazed and fascinated. The bad news is, most adults just have no idea, and we have surely not been getting better at having public schools teach people stuff. I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s something-something-“Republicans out of office”. [3:18]
The last one is from 2017, just before the last total solar eclipse visible in the continental US. Longtime readers may recall that I chose going to that over going to NN that year and seeing my well-loved friends.
I do love you all, but I am happy about my choice. To quote this video, “the reason to see an eclipse isn’t because it’s rare. It’s because of how it will make you feel.” I was pretty blasé about partial eclipses, but I decided totality might be cool. I cannot describe the feeling. Next total eclipse: April 8, 2024. Be there if you can! [3:06]
Back to scaling the solar system! Jared Belcher, curator of the Digital Astronaut channel, started his scaling with a soccer ball sun on the football field at his alma mater, Carson-Newman University (a Tennessee Baptist college, so, science! Good for them!) [8:10]
Sweden is on the case with the world’s largest permanent scale model of the solar system, the “Sweden Solar System”, started by Nils Brenning of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and Gösta Gahm of Stockholm University. The model, at a scale of 1:20,000,000, uses the Avicii Arena in Stockholm as the sun, and includes MANY more bodies than our tour guide here has time to visit. See that link to its Wikipedia page for a complete listing and a map OF SWEDEN marking all the bodies represented. The to-scale “termination shock” is 590 miles away from the “sun”. [7:34]
SciShow Space’s video isn’t about our scale — it’s about our weirdness. [6:36]
Finally, because I know KTK people love beautiful machinery, this is just a short, wordless demonstration of a NOT to scale nine-planet orrery (with moons!) made by Staines & Son Orrery Makers. Look at the gearing on that puppy! I can’t help but notice that no mention is made on their website of the price of any of their works, which I am certain fall into the “if you have to ask” category. This is just genius watchmaking. [1:32]
Later that same day: Because it illustrates the “not to scale solar system” issue, I am stealing this from John Cleese, @TerribleMaps, and BeeD over in the Tweets of the Week thread.