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This is the scaled distance between Earth and Moon. Did you think the moon was farther?

• The Earth and Moon to Scale 23We have all seen drawings or sketches in books that show Earth and moon together in the same view, but in reality they are really very different in size, and are much farther apart than you might think.By creating properly scaled drawings, you will get a better idea of what their sizes are really like! All you will need is a compass, a metric ruler, and a calculator.The photo above was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft on September18, 1977 at a distance of 7 million miles from Earth, and it has not been edited in
  any way. Are their diameters to scale? Their distance from each other? Even actual images can be distorted because of perspective and distance effects.
• Problem 1 - The radius of the Moon is 1,737 kilometers, and the radius of Earth is 6,378 kilometers. What is the ratio of Earth's radius to the Moon's?
• Problem 2 - To the nearest whole number, about how much larger is the diameter of Earth than the moon? 
• Problem 3 - With your ruler and compass, draw two circles that represent this size difference, and use a radius of 1 centimeter for the moon disk. Inside the circles, label them 'Earth' and 'Moon'.
• Problem 4 - The distance between the center of Earth and the Moon is 384,000kilometers. To the nearest integer, how many times the radius of Earth is the distance to the Moon?
• Problem 5 - Cut out the circles for Earth and the Moon from Problem 3. Using the radius of your circle for Earth as a guide, how far apart, in centimeters, would you have to hold the two cut-outs to make a scale model of the Earth-Moon system that accurately shows the sizes of the two bodies and their distance?
• Problem 6 - Look through books in your library, or use GOOGLE to do an image search. Do any of the illustrations show the Earth-Moon system in its correct scale? Why do you think artists draw the Earth-Moon system the way that they do?