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NeurobicsAstronomical Ping PongLloyd Esler Some people consider the Earth to be no more significant than a ping-pong ball in the overall scheme of things. If the Earth was the size of a ping-pong ball, what then? For a start, you would be a lot smaller, only about 50 nanometres tall. The Sun would be a 4.14-metre sphere about 450 metres away. The nearest star (Alpha Centauri) at this scale would be120,000 kilometres away (about a third of the way to the Moon). If the Sun was a ping-pong ball, Earth would be a 0.3mm dot four metres from it. Get someone to hold up a ping-pong ball and move backwards until its size matches that of the Sun in the sky -- you should find yourself about four metres away. Use the same technique to guess the distance from Earth to the Moon if the Moon was a ping-pong ball.
Lloyd Esler lives in Invercargill and has an interest in things scientific. Russell Dear is a Mathematician living in Invercargill |
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