The Voss Model in West Lafayette

The Voss Model (Visiting Our Solar System) on the campus of Purdue University is a scale model of the solar system. Amazingly, every foot you travel around the Voss Model’s Fibonacci spiral on the ground represents 5.4 million miles in space. All eight planets are represented, as well as the Kuiper Belt at the furthest reaches of the spiral.

The Voss Model is named after Purdue engineering science graduate and astronaut Janice Voss. Dr. Voss was an MIT-trained engineer in aeronautics and astronautics. She spent 48 days in space on her five missions. Unfortunately, she died from cancer in 2012.

Jeff Laramore is the artist who designed the Voss Model, which was dedicated in 2015. The sun is 45 feet in diameter. Mr. Laramore has created many public artworks and is known to work with many different materials, including water, aluminum, steel, and onyx.

The Fibonacci spiral is a geometric representation based on the Fibonacci sequence, where each number is the sum of the preceding two numbers. For example:

• 0 + 1 = 1
• 1 + 1 = 2
• 1 + 2 = 3
• 2 + 3 = 5
• 3 + 5 = 8

And so on infinitely (∞).

It only takes a few minutes to walk the solar system and see space from a new view.