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solar system projects
Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 3:55 pm
by deleted-544917
Hi, based on an question posed by someone else to one of you my daughter decided to do her science project on how many days are in a year on each planet. Well now I'm trying to figure out other than internet research how we are supposed to conduct an experiment like this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. She has gotten all of the pertinent information off of the internet but it says in her project outline that we need to have charts and graphs depicting the outcome of our experiment.
Thanks,
Heather
Re: solar system projects
Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:57 pm
by MadelineB
Hello Heather and Heather's number one daughter! Welcome to science buddies!
This is a great project for showing graphs on your display board!
The key is to pick characteristics of the planets which show an association with the number of days in the year. Then you can make a graph that shows the selected characteristic on the horizontal (X) axis and the number of days in the year on the vertical (Y) axis. One useful "characteristic" I am thinking would be physical size of the planet. But maybe your research on the internet has given you some insight into some other characteristic.
You could display this as a table or "chart" as well as a graph.
Another eye-catching display would be based on photos or drawings of each of the planets, displayed by relative size.
Do not hesitate to ask more questions! Good luck!
Re: solar system projects
Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 5:44 pm
by theborg
luvmykayleebug09,
A year is the length of time it takes for a planet to make one complete orbit around it's host star. In our case, one Earth year is 365 Earth days. This phenomenon is due to the gravitational attraction between the planet and the sun and is a function of distance from the sun the planet is. The planets distance are known, as is the number of Earth days it takes each to complete one orbit (that planets year). This could be graphed with distance on the x axis and Earth days on the y axis. As an "experiment" your daughter could show that the planets rotation (i.e. day) and/or the mass of the planet doesnt really affect the planets year as a function of distance.