DropTableAdventures - A model solar system that’s completely to scale! | Bay Trail Solar System, Melbourne
Metadata:
| Season Identifier | S06E04 |
| Original Filename | solarsystem.mov |
| Date Filmed | 2022-04-09 - 2022-04-25 |
| Date Uploaded | 2022-05-21 09:56:32 UTC |
| Date Released | 2022-05-25 07:55:47 UTC |
| Location(s) | Richmond, VIC and the Bay Trail |
| Notable Equipment | eBike |
| Camera(s) Used | 2x GoPro Hero 8 |
| Software Used | Final Cut Pro, mTracker 3D, mCallouts, OmniGraffle |
| Subscribers when released | 262 |
Trivia/Background:
First video to take place entirely on a bike.
This one actually proved to be quite popular - it’s an interesting spot.
Video:
Description:
You’ve all seen a poster of the solar system - showing the Sun and all eight planets (nine if it’s when Pluto was still considered a planet!). But you can’t make this poster properly to scale, or else the planets would mostly be too small to see. They truly are tiny compared to how far they are from the sun - and to get the full sense of scale we’d have to make a very large model indeed.
Which, in 2008, happened along the Bay Trail, that runs along the foreshore of Melbourne - here’s what it’s like from the Sun to Pluto.
Bonus fact for those still reading:
In the description for the planet Mercury, I mentioned the metal Mercury. This liquid metal was previously known as Quicksilver or Hydrargyrum (which you’ll know from its chemical symbol Hg). The name we use in modern English, “Mercury” does in fact come from the name of the planet - as it was decided to be preferable to “Quicksilver” for the name of the element.
How did the planet get this name though? The definitions actually come from alchemy, which can charitably be described as an ancient and somewhat less evidence based attempt at chemistry. The seven metals known to antiquity were assigned to the seven planets of the solar system - the Sun was gold, the Moon silver, Mercury was mercury, Venus was copper, Mars was iron, Jupiter was tin and Saturn was lead.
There’s two things you’ll note here - firstly, the definition of “planet” was a little different back then - including the Sun and the Moon. Secondly Mercury is of course the odd one out in that the name stuck, but had the rest of them stuck, your roll of 63/37 lead/tin solder would be referred to as Saturn/Jupiter solder, or one of the modern RoHS equivalent being Jupiter/Moon/Venus…
Images used under CC licensing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#/media/File:Solar_System_true_color.jpg - CC-BY-SA CactiStaccingCrane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Animation_of_Pluto_orbit.gif - CC-BY-SA Phoenix7777 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#/media/File:Pluto-Charon_system-new.gif - CC-BY-SA Tomruen
