The Solar System for Dummies

Relative distances of the planets from our sun

Perhaps the most memorable character created by the late, great Gilda Radner was her bespectacled Emily Litella. Like Fort Lee's Roseann Rosannadanna, she was a Jersey girl with a bit of a comprehension problem. Gilda's Emily schtick was her failure to understand: upon spotting a bumper sticker saying "Save Soviet Jewry," she'd editorialize about why people were so concerned with Russian rings, brooches, necklaces and rings. Informed that the word was "Jewry" instead of "jewelry," she'd blithely chirp, "Never mind..."

eHow.com's stable of freelancers regularly go all Emily on their readers, a result of not understanding the questions posed by the site's webcrawlers. Take "How to Hang Planets From a Ceiling With Correct Orbits"¹; as answered, sort of, by Robert Paxton. Coming from someone with even the barest of scientific backgrounds, a proper answer would remind us that the planetary diameters are way smaller than the diameters of their orbits and then suggest how to scale the diameters of the different planets' orbits down from millions and billions of miles to room-size. Not so with Robert...

In the first place, Paxton screws up the assignment: his instructions create a model of the solar system a foot in diameter, not room-size! But it gets worse: here's what he says about the orbits of the planets:

"Draw the orbits of the planets using a compass to create perfect circles around the center. Make the first four orbits close to the Sun, more or less evenly spaced. These will be the orbits of the inner rocky planets. Leave a gap for the asteroids, and then draw the next four orbits closer to the circumference of the circle, again more or less evenly spaced. These will be the orbits of the outer gas planets." Wait a minute, Robert: the question specified "correct orbits" - go ahead, look at it again. "More or less evenly spaced"? Though Bode's Law isn't correct, it's certainly closer to correct than "more or less evenly spaced"! Apparently that creative writing degree of Bob's didn't involve any science courses. Never mind...

Paxton, you dummy, the original question, which probably came from a third-grader, suggests some kid wanted to build a scale model of the solar system. Your answer (which should have never made it past eHow's crack team of content editors) is just plain bullshit. Bullshit answers are the main reason the Antisocial Network created the Dumbass of the Day award - and here's yours.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was ehow.com/how_12090884_hang-planets-ceiling-correct-orbits.html

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