TRI-CITIES, Wash., – A new educational project is set to transform the trails along the Columbia River into a scale model of the solar system.
Concrete was recently poured around ten basalt slabs, and will soon display the entire solar system in the Tri-Cities area. In total, there are 13 monuments around the Tri-Cities, 10 being built and three already completed. There are an additional two outside the area, landing in Prosser and Benton City.
Trevor Macduff, director at Silas Education, envisioned the project nearly fifteen years ago and has been working on it with the Hanford Reach Museum since then.
“When we get the artwork on here, it’ll have Corten steel and a stainless plaque,” said Macduff. “The plaque will have all this information (like) the astronomical symbol, the scaled diameter, the scaled orbit.”
The basalt slabs will also include a display with a QR code link. It will take you to a website and show you other displays in the area, so one would be able to track and visit them throughout the Mid-Columbia region.
The Reach Museum also plays a key role in the project, housing the center of the solar system with the help of it’s solar arches. Monuments surround the structure at a total distance of 64 miles in diameter. Macduff reiterated how all parts of the project will work together to help encourage learning.
“A student could get on a big yellow bus, go visit the reach museum, see the sun, the solar arches, learn about the angles and the true north and the solstice, and then start walking all the way up four and a half miles to Jupiter. Nowhere else in the whole system are we going to have one road with all of these planets on it,” he added.
Pauline Schafer, education manager at the Reach Museum, also says the project would help get children out of their classrooms and textbooks and into the world around them.
“This is just another way to, to get some interaction in education,” said Schafer. “So again, it’s not just reading about it in a book, but actually going somewhere and experiencing the scale.”
Macduff says he hopes to have 40 monuments built in the future, stretching across Southeastern Washington and parts of Northeastern Oregon.
