About how many Earths could fit side by side between the Earth and the Moon, on average?

In most drawings of the Earth and the Moon, the two sit close together on the page, like a ball and a smaller ball beside it. Those drawings are misleading. The Moon is much farther away than most people realise.

On average, it is about 384,400 km from the Earth. That is roughly thirty Earths lined up side by side. Because we can see the Moon so clearly without a telescope, it seems close, but thirty Earths is a very long way.

The word "average" matters here. The Moon's path around the Earth is not a perfect circle, so its distance changes. At its farthest, it is almost thirty-two Earths away; at its closest, between twenty-eight and twenty-nine.

You can see the real gap for yourself. If the Earth were the size of a basketball, the Moon would be about the size of a tennis ball. To show the distance between them correctly, you would have to place the tennis ball more than seven metres away from the basketball, which is a good deal farther than any drawing in a textbook.