Igor has taken to the rink again to give a lecture to his teammates. This time, he’s talking about the scale of the solar system. He has several things with him, including the rink.

(By the way, I hope you’re familiar with the metric system - if you’re not, a lot of this article might not make sense.)

“If the Sun were the diameter of this puck, you could place it on one goal line, and... you would not be able to fit the entire solar system in the rink. Uranus would be on the other goal line, and Neptune would be off of the rink. Also, Jupiter would be only 2.6 mm in diameter, Saturn 2.2 mm, and Uranus and Neptune about 0.9 mm each. Earth would be as tall as a sheet of paper.”

“We need to do better. We need to see the planets. Instead of shrinking the Sun, let’s shrink the Earth to the size of a US dime. Excuse me while I get my shrink ray.”

Igor makes a metaphorical ZAP sound while his teammates laugh. He pulls a dime out of his pocket.

“There. Everything you’ve ever known - your teammates, your friends, your family, your pets, your iPhones, your favorite sports team, the entire internet, everything in every country, all of humanity - all of your world now been shrunk to the size of this dime. This is all you know.”

Igor pulls out a large pinhead. “This is the Moon. How far apart are the Earth and the Moon?” Igor holds the Earth in one hand and the Moon in the other. “This far? This far? This far?”

Igor balances the Earth at the top of his finger and holds the Moon just past his elbow at the lower end of his upper arm. “They’re about this far apart, 53 cm. Seriously. This is as far as humanity has gone.”

Igor lays down the Earth and the Moon on one side of the hockey rink before pulling out a second dime. “This is Venus, only slightly smaller than Earth. It’s so close in scale that we can use another dime. How far away is Venus?” Igor skates around the rink to various locations. “This far? This far? Maybe this far?”

Igor goes to the other side of the rink. “Venus would need to be all the way over here, just over 57 meters away! For comparison, this rink is only 61 meters long. We need more room. Come with me. Oh, and bring your bikes and skateboards. Something to traverse long distances. You’ll need them. Or your hiking boots if you’re not into that. You’ll be going several kilometers.”

Igor goes to a long hiking trail with the team. At the start of it all, he stands up and asks the team how big the Sun must be, and how far from Earth.

“In fact, if the Earth were a dime, the Sun must be as tall as I am, just under 2 meters (1.94 meters) in diameter! It’s huge! Also, I’d need to stand about 208 meters from Earth, or about an eighth of a mile.

Igor puts a circle his size labeled “SUN” at the start of the trail. Igor asks the rest of the team to join him as they march forward with locating the planets.

“This pencil eraser is Mercury, about 81 meters away from me.” By now, it is very clear that the planets are merely specks in space. Mercury seems like it should be very close to the Sun, but here it is, a pencil eraser quite far from Igor. Utterly lost in space. The team lays Mercury down and continues forward.

“Venus - this dime. 151 meters away. Right here. Earth. This other dime, 208 meters away. Remember the rink example? This is it in the context of the other planets.”

“Also, look back towards our model Sun and it will be the same size as the real Sun.”

“Mars - this marble. 318 meters.” The team has been walking for nearly four minutes now. Mars stands about one and a half times farther away than Earth. Relative to Earth, Mars stands 110 meters away.

“Mars is just over 200 times farther away from Earth than the Moon is. If this was in a rink, do you think you guys could stand next to Earth and shoot a puck to hit Mars?”

“Uh… no?”

“NASA is able to send robots to Mars, and aim at very specific spots on that marble as well.”

“Yeah, I guess?”

“And not only that, but both planets would be moving around in space. And spinning, giving you day and night, and Mars is also rotating. Try to aim for a specific spot on the marble with all of that. And yet, NASA does this.”

“Now guys, you’re in for a trek down the trail. Hope you bought your bike or skateboard. Jupiter.” Igor hands a volleyball to a team member, 8 inches or 20 centimeters in diameter. “Even though you’re eleven times larger than Earth, you’re only the size of this, and you’re just over a kilometer from the Sun.”

“Are you crazy?! One kilometer?!” I jus-”

“Go. You’ll be walking for nine minutes from here, or you can bring your bike and ride the distance. Oh, and you’re one of the very lucky ones. We need to split up from here, unfortunately. I’ll use a GPS to keep track of you and verify you’ve reached the correct distance. I’ll use radio to communicate.”

“Saturn - you’re almost twice as far as Jupiter, almost exactly 2 kilometers from the Sun. Your ball is just under 17 centimeters in diameter, just smaller than Jupiter’s, but still nine and a half times larger than Earth’s ball.”

“But what about the rings?”

“We don’t have all day!” Saturn gets into position.

“Uranus is a baseball, and Neptune is a slightly smaller tennis ball. Uranus - you’re twice as far as Satur-”

“OH COME ON!”

“Neptune, you’re three times as far, standing over six kilometers from the Sun. That’s thirty times Earth’s distance.”

“Dwarf planets Pluto and Eris, you’re these tiny, tiny pinheads. Pluto - go just over eight kilometers from the Sun, and Eris, over fourteen kilometers.”

Jupiter sighs and thinks he is actually one of the favorable ones when he hears of the distances to the other planets. “And I thought the first four planets were far away from each other…”

“It takes light only 8 minutes to go from the Sun to the Earth, and only 1.3 seconds to go from Earth to the Moon. It takes about 80 minutes to reach Saturn, and over four hours to reach Neptune. It would reach Eris in nine and a half hours.”

After a bunch of angry complaints from his team members for having to go such long distances and severely interrupting their schedule, Igor decided not to give such a lecture again.

Calculations below. I set the Sun to Igor’s height and went from there.