Combining interests in science, education, health,
exercise, community relations, geography, culture and
art, please take a few minutes to get to know our
Anchorage Rotary Light Speed Planet Walk ... then come
visit and walk the planets!
The Anchorage Rotary Club, beginning in 2004, has
completed a $600,000 plus "Light Speed Planet Walk".
Originally the idea of a local high school student,
the Planet Walk (PW) is based on laying out a map of
the solar system using the walking speed of the
average person to represent the speed of light/
Beginning with the sun station on the Performing Art
Center Campus in the center of Anchorage, a walker at
an average pace represents a beam of solar light as
he/she walks to the successive planet stations. The
walkers time between the various stations is the same
amount of time that light takes from the real sun to
travel to the real planets. For example, the time it
takes one to walk to the Earth station is about eight
minutes, the same amount of time that it takes light
to travel from the Sun to Earth. Pluto (which is no
longer a "Planet" but still has a station) is located
some 16 kilometers away from the Sun Station.
The project took three Rotary Presidencies to
complete (of which my year was one), including two
major Phases and major community support. Phase I
built the the "infrastructure" of the Sun Station and
the nine planet stations, including involving the city
for codes and legal issues, property owners for
permission to place the planet stations, schools for
curriculum, scientists for accuracy, and Rotarians,
businesses and volunteers for fund raising, in-kind
services, and labor. Several Major foundations were
instrumental. Phase II, included the building of a
kiosk with three weather proof video screens:
1) gives a video on the history of PW development;
2) provides a video on the relationship that Alaskan Native people
had with the sun, and:
3) provides an
internet/interactive capacity (complete with mouse) to
access the NSA and JPL for up to the minute info on
Space Exploration.
For a 23 minute movie presentation of Phase I, which I
produced, of the PW (it takes time to load) you can go
here:
homepage.mac.com/deisher/iMovieTheater155.html
Our PW website is here:
anchorageplanetwalk.org/kiosk.html
We have established a substantial maintenance fund for
repairs and upgrades. We continue work on the PW.
Current plans are to generate a community run from
Pluto to the Solar Station on the Autumnal Equinox.
We believe there is nothing like it anywhere. It
incorporates many of the basic Rotarian concepts often
pursued separately into one major project.
Jon Deisher, PP, MPHF
Anchorage Rotary
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