Pace out the solar system

Every picture of the solar system tells the truth about the order and lies about the distances — because the truth does not fit on a page. This one refuses to shrink the gaps. Put something on your doorstep to be the Sun, and find out how far down your own street each planet stands.

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  Every picture of the solar system fits on one page.
  So it cannot be very far.

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  Those pictures tell the truth about the order and lie about the distances, because the truth does not fit on a page.

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  Then where would the real one fit?

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  Down your street. Put something on the doorstep to be the Sun, pick a size below, and go and count the paces.

Then go and walk it

1. Take a grown-up with you. This walk goes much further than it sounds — Neptune can be most of a kilometre down the road — and you will be counting paces and looking at your hand, not at the traffic.
2. Put your Sun on the doorstep, or on a gatepost where you will find it again.
3. Pace out the first four. They are surprisingly close together, and you will run out of them almost at once.

Print the sheet and take it with you — the Sun at football size across two pages, one card per planet, and every distance in your own steps as well as in metres.

If you cannot do the whole thing, do the first four and then look at how much further the list says you would have to go. A model you gave up on teaches the distances better than a diagram you finished. Nobody has ever drawn the solar system to scale on a piece of paper, and after this walk you will know exactly why not.