Suppose that now you want to make a scale model of the solar system using the same ball bearing to represent the sun. How far fr

Question

Studentka2010

2 months ago

9

Suppose that now you want to make a scale model of the solar system using the same ball bearing to represent the sun. How far fr

om it would you place a sphere representing the earth? (Center to center distance please.) The distance from the center of the sun to the center of the earth is 1.496×10111.496×1011 m and the radius of the sun is 6.96×1086.96×108 m.

Physics

1 answer:

serg [3.5K] · Answer 1 · 2026-03-07T10:47:46+03:00

Response:

d = 0.645 m (assuming the ball bearing's radius is 3 mm)

Clarification:

Here's what we know:

The distance from the sun's center to earth's center is 1.496x10¹¹m = $d_{e}$
The sun's radius measures 6.96x10⁸m = $r_{s}$

We need to estimate a radius for the ball bearing; let's take the radius to be 3 mm = $r_{b}$ .

First, we need to determine how much larger the sun's radius is compared to the ball bearing's radius using the equation below:

$\frac{r_{s}}{r_{b}} = \frac{6.96\cdot 10^{8}m}{3\cdot 10^{-3}m} = 2.32\cdot 10^{11}$

Now, let's figure out the distance from the sun's center to the center of a spherical model for the earth, $d_{s}$ :

[tex] d_{s} = \frac{d_{e}}{r_{s}/r_{b}} = \frac{1.496 \cdot 10^{11} m}{2.32\cdot 10^{11}} = 0.645 m

I trust this is beneficial for you!