My girlfriend doesn't have a scientific education, and I was thinking of ways to teach her about some of the things I love in a way that she could easily understand. When pondering how to explain the size of the solar system (and how small we are), it occurred to me that describing the distance from the Earth to the Sun in terms of how long it would take to walk there could put things into perspective.
Here is what I found.
Average adult human walking speed,
Let ws = 5 km/hs
Walking distance per day,
Let dpd = ws * 24 = 100 km
Mean distance from the Earth to the Sun (1 AU),
Let dts = 149,600,000 km
Thus,
Days to the sun,
Let days = dts / dpd = 1,496,000
Years to the sun,
Let years = days / 365.25 = 4095.82
Just shy of 4100 years. And what were humans doing 4100 years ago?
-Ancient Egypt was in its 'First Intermediate Period' where the first centralized power had collapsed and Egypt was governed by local rulers. The great pyramids had been built for hundreds of years.
-If the Xia Dynasty in China ever existed (I don't personally think it did), it would have been founded somewhere around now. Confucius wouldn't be born for another 1500 years.
-Japan was in the Middle Jomon period, and its peoples were starting to live in larger settlements and practice agriculture.
I'm reminded of the episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, where he describes the cosmic calendar, and shows all of human history accumulated in the last seconds of December 31st.
Invent civilization, let it stew. Take a stroll to the sun while you wait.
You'd get there today.
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