The Gainesville Solar Walk - Gainesville, FL - Outdoor Interactive Science Displays on Waymarking.com

The model allows visitors to walk the 4 billion to 1 scaled distance from the sun to Pluto to get a feel for the distance separating the solar bodies. It's located along a nearly 1-mile long section of NW Eighth Avenue where there are no crossroads that would hinder one's enjoyment of the solar walk.

The following information about the Gainesville Solar Walk is available on the Alachua Astronomy Club, Inc. website:

Spanning nearly a mile, the Gainesville solar system model has returned to NW 8th Avenue, beginning at NW 34th Street with the Sun, and ending at NW 22nd Street with Pluto. The monuments, designed and constructed from recycled materials by artist Elizabeth Indianos, were installed in February and March, 2002.

While within walking distance of Littlewood, Westwood, Glen Springs and Finley schools, we believe that the Solar Walk will be an enduring learning tool for students (and adults!) throughout the region. A field trip to Gainesville's own solar system model will put your world in perspective.

Eighth Avenue is ideal for a solar system model. While other models exist throughout the world, most cannot be viewed from a single vantage point. They may be too long for pedestrians or classroom visitors to appreciate, or too small to provide the relative diameter of the smallest planets. There are no cross-streets, and no business signs or driveways (unusual for such a long length of roadway inside City limits) so that each planet may be accurately placed, and pedestrians need not negotiate crosswalks every block or so.

But the project is not yet complete. Future enhancement include additional benches, an asteroid rock garden, nighttime lighting, enhanced landscaping and more.

Information plaques adorn each monument. These plaques are an inherent facet of the educational model. Each shows the planet's relative size compared to the Sun in this 4 billion to 1 scale, distance from the Sun, rotational and orbital period, a rubbing area for the Solar Walk "passport", and more.

Scientific Principle(s) being demonstrated: This model helps visitors understand the relative positions/distances of the planets and moons in our Solar System to one another. Briefly explain if the experiment was effective for you. Could it have been better?: Yes, the experiment was effective for me. it certainly helped me to understand how the planets are positioned in relation to one another. I remember learning the Planetary Mnemonic "My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" many years ago and while it certainly helped me to remember the names of the planets and their order in terms of distance from the Sun, it didn't really help me understand the distance between the planets or their distance from the sun. This solar system model did a great job of helping with that though. When is the apparatus/experiment available to the public: 24/7/365

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