Planets

Our KIC presentation is on how planets rotate,

how planets orbit the sun,

and how far away the planets are from the sun. We

chose this topic because

we really like space and we want to know as much

about it as we possibly can.

The exact questions that the three of us tried to answer were how do the planets rotate, how do the planets orbit the sun, how far away are the planets from the sun, and how long does it take for the planets to orbit the sun? I thought of the questions being pretty easy to answer. Especially the questions about how do the planets rotate and bow do the planets orbit the sun.

—Mercury is 58,000,000 km from the sun. It takes only 88 days for Mercury to

orbit the sun. It takes 58 days 16 hours for Mercury to rotate on its axis.

—Venus is 108,000,000 km from the sun. It takes 224 days 17 hours for Venus

to orbit the sun. It takes 243 days 4 hours for Venus to rotate on its axis.

—Earth is 149,600,000 km from the sun. It takes 365

days 6 hours for Earth

to orbit the sun. It takes 23 hours 56 minutes for Earth

to rotate 011 its axis,

—Mars is 227,900,000 km from the sun. It takes 687 days for Mars to orbit

the sun. It takes 24 hours 37 minutes for Mars to rotate on its axis.

—Jupiter is 778,300,000 km from the sun. It takes 11

years 10 months for

Jupiter to orbit the sun. It takes 9 hours 50 minutes for

Jupiter to rotate on

its axis.

—Saturn is 1,427,000,000 km from the sun. It takes 29 years 6 months for

Saturn to orbit the sun. It takes 10 hours 39 for Saturn to rotate on its axis.

—Uranus is 2,869,600,000 km from the sun, It takes 84

years for Uranus

to orbit the sun. It takes 17 hours 14 minutes for

Uranus to rotate on its

axis.

—Neptune is 4,496,700,000 km from the sun. It takes

164 years 10 months

for Neptune to orbit the sun. It takes 16 hours for

Uranus to rotate on

its axis.

—Pluto is 5,900,000,000 km from the sun. It takes 247

years 8 months for

Pluto to orbit the sun. It takes 6 days 9 hours for Pluto

to rotate on its

axis.

I looked on the Internet to find out what other people

have discovered about our topic and the results were

most people had the same answer we had for the questions, how do planets rotate and how do the planets orbit the sun? And the questions how far the planets are from the sun and how does it take for the planets to orbit the sun? The answered varied because different books have different information on those two questions.

The things we did to answer our own questions were: First, we looked in encyclopedias we got from home and from the library in town. Next, we looked on the internet for information about our questions. Then, we looked books that we borrowed from the school library. Later, we went to our local library for some more information on our questions. Finally, we did some more research from different web-sites on the internet.

Some facts we discovered from our research on the planets are, solar wind, shock waves, radiation belts, magnetosphere, magnetic field lines, and turbulent areas

are what causes planets to rotate. Solar wind and the sun's gravitational pull are the two things that make the planets orbit the sun. I learned that Mercury is the only planet that does not have an atmosphere. That, and because it is the closest planet to the sun, makes it the hottest planet in the solar system. I also learned that Venus can get up to four times as hot as an oven up to maximum heat.

One thing that we suggest students might try next year with our topic is try to figure out how far away the nearest star, planet. and galaxy is from our own galaxy, The Milky Way Galaxy. Some areas of research that we wanted to try but other kids can do are: Look at more internet sites, look at more books from the library, and more encyclopedias for even more information. A new question for someone else to investigate might be: How far away is the nearest star, planet, and galaxy from our own galaxy?

We got this information from books, encyclopedias, and the Internet.

The books we got some information from are The Children's Space

Atlas and The Planets:Exploring the Solar System. The web-site that we got some information from was the Atronomy For Kids Site.