Question: How far is the moon away to the earth?

NULL answered on 9 Nov 2015:

Really, really, REALLY far.

The distance to the moon is about 384,000 km.

If you took all the primary schools in Ireland and piled them all up on top of each other, the top one would be around 20 km high, so you’d be nowhere near.

If you took all the primary school children’s houses, and piled them on top of the schools, you might be nearly at 3,000 km up, so still pretty far from the moon. Space starts around 100 km up, so most of you would have to wear space suits if we piled up your houses like this. Also most satellites circle the earth at around 160 km up, and you wouldn’t want them hitting your houses.

What if we took all the primary schools from the whole world, and piled them on top? I did some calculations and I guess you would reach around 7,000 km up, if you did that. It might be difficult to learn maths in space, though. All the pencils would be floating around… And we’re still nowhere near the moon.

We need to add on something really tall to reach it. How about we add on lots of short things. If we took all the primary school children in the world, and had them stand on each other’s shoulders on top of the pile of buildings… (that’s not so bad because you’re in space and you don’t weigh anything!) If you all did that, you would reach nearly 130,000 km up!!

That sounds good, but we’re still only a third of the way to the moon. Now, what if we got your parents, and your teachers…..?