tactile solar system scaled sizes and distances of planets

This is a scale model of the solar system, if the sun were the size of a basketball, then the planets would be the sizes that they are on this model. also, i included inch marksall the way along this model which is 12 inches all together, so that people who have sight problems can use this to get an idea of the distances between planets in our solar system. with the scale that i made the planets we would normally have to represent distances in feet, not inches, but i figured if the person who is using this would imagine that every inch represents 1 foot it would make things a bit easier, they can slide their fingers across every inch as many times as needed to get to each planet(not to get to each planet on the model but to get an idea of actual distances beings that it would be physically impossible for me to represent the planets on this model distant wise since the planets are so far apart. would need a much  much bigger model for this, one that would not be possible to create so i figured this would be the next best method of getting an idea of the distances. here is a chart that will tell you how many feet ( or inches is this case) you will have to go to get to all of the planets ( uranus and neptune are left out of the chart but i will be adding them soon, just in a hurry at the moment. oh and this model also depicts a few of the moons of other planets, though it would be quite difficult to depict every moon in the solar system since there are ALOT of moons, for example jupiter has about 74 known moons. anyways here is the chart. As you can see, it would take more than a 12 inch model to represent the distances in our solar system, which is why ive decided to just replace feet with inches so that every 106 inches = 150 million km or 1 AU (aka distance from the earth to the sun. Decided to do it this way so that the person using this model as a learning tool wouldnt have to sit there and run there finger through the model inch by inch till they got to 41 feet up to about 4200 feet (though pluto isnt in this model) feet they will just have to count out 163 inches up to 4200 inches. hahaha i know, that seems like a lot to do also but it really gives u perspective on the distamces in the solar system. and sorry if this has confused you, im just in a hurry to get this and my other models posted before deadline for the contest, didnt even have time to print this out yet unfortunately :( cause i only found out about this contest about 7 days ago, so been working my butt off since i found out to get all my models done. atleast one model ive completed and printe d will have pics of the print though. 

Solar System Scaled to 12-inch Sun

Parameter Real Distance/Size Scaled Distance/Size ----------------- ------------------- ---------------------

Sun (diameter) 1,392,000 km 12 inches (basketball) or Mercury (distance) 0.39 AU 41.5 feet Mercury (diameter) 4880 km 0.05 inches (grain of sand) Venus (distance) 0.72 AU 76.6 feet Venus (diameter) 12112 km 0.11 inches (small pebble) Earth (distance) 150 million km = 1 AU 106.4 feet Earth (diameter) 12,756 km 0.12 inches (small pebble) Mars (distance) 228 million km 163.6 feet Mars (diameter) 6,800 km 0.06 inches (grain of sand) Jupiter (distance) 5.20 AU 552 feet Jupiter (diameter) 142,984 km 1.2 inches (ping pong ball) Saturn (distance) 9.54 AU 1012 feet (>3 football fields) Saturn (diameter) 120,536 km 1.04 inches (ping pong ball w/rings!) Pluto (distance) 39.54 AU 4200 feet (almost 0.8 miles) Pluto (diameter) 2,300 km 0.02 inches (very small sand grain!)

Next nearest star 4.3 light years = 5680 miles(!) or 9088 km (Proxima Centauri) 25 trillion miles = (roughly from Baltimore to Hawaii!) 42 trillion km