Your Planetary Age
To calculate what your age would be if you lived on another planet.
Theory & Background
Have you ever wondered about this fascinating scientific process? Did you ever wonder how old you would be if you lived on another planet? Using a simple calculation against the planetary year, you can do just that!
Required Materials
- Notebook or paper
- Pen or pencil
- Calculator
Estimated Time
About 5 to 10 minutes
Step-By-Step Procedure
First off, find a group of volunteers with various ages. This experiment is best done with your family.
Make a simple chart on your paper that has four columns: Name, Earth Age, Planet, Planet Age. Enter the names of your volunteers in the first column. If you have 3 volunteers, you would end up with 3 rows. See sample below: Name Earth Age Planet Planet Age [Volunteer 1] [Volunteer 2] [Volunteer 3]
Next, ask the volunteers for their Earth age (their REAL ages) and enter them into the second column: Name Earth Age Planet Planet Age [Volunteer 1] 8 [Volunteer 2] 13 [Volunteer 3] 43
Now ask your volunteers what their favorite planet is! Once you have the planet, write it in the third column, like so: Name Earth Age Planet Planet Age [Volunteer 1] 8 Venus [Volunteer 2] 13 Mars [Volunteer 3] 43 Pluto
Now that you have the name, earth age, and target planet, it's time to calculate your volunteer's ages! The age calculation takes on the following formula: (earth age / period of revolution) == planet age Refer to the chart in the NOTE section for the period of revolution value for the selected planet. Using the above formula, calculate everyone's age. See example below: Name Earth Age Planet Planet Age [Volunteer 1] 8 Venus (8 / 0.615) = 13.00 [Volunteer 2] 13 Mars (13 / 1.88) = 6.91 [Volunteer 3] 43 Pluto (43 / 248.5) = 0.17
That's it! Now you know how old you and your volunteers would be on another planet.
Experiment Tips
- Please refer to the chart below for calculating your planetary age. Planet Period of revolution (calculation metric) Earth td> 1.0 Earth years (365 Earth days) Jupiter 11.9 Earth years (4343.5 Earth days) Mars 1.88 Earth years (686.9 Earth days) Mercury 0.241 Earth years (87.9 Earth days) Neptune 164.8 Earth years (60,152 Earth days) Pluto 248.5 Earth years (90,702.5 Earth days) Saturn 29.5 Earth years (10,767.5 Earth days) Uranus 84.0 Earth years (30,660 Earth days) Venus 0.615 Earth years (224.7 Earth days)
Observation
Have fun with this experiment and add a few more columns to calculate each volunteer's age on more planets.
Result & Conclusion
A planetary year is the length of time it takes that planet to revolve around the sun. The further the planet is from the sun, the longer it's period of revolution, and thus the longer its year.