Daughters Homework / Excuse to Buy Game

[nastydrm]

Hi,

I may have found an excuse to buy Universe Sandbox, this is a snippet of my daughter's homework "If Earth's orbit was a 1000 days, what effect would that have on life?"

Please bear in mind that this homework is from a Catholic School that teaches creationism...I'm shaking my head looking at the floor. It's possible they may not expect a scientific response.

My three important questions stem from that:

1. Can we change the orbital distance until Earth's normal rotational speed would make 1000 days per orbit of Sun and simulate effect of climate?

2. Can we increase the rotational speed (without changing dist. from Sun) until one orbit would be 1000 days and simulate effect on climate?

3. Have I missed a possible scenario where one orbit of the Sun could have 1000 days?

Thanks for any help and I will probably buy it anyway, just can't wait to know if I can Science the nonsense out of this one piece of homework!!

[DenisineD]

Hello,

Well yes you can change the orbit distance by changing the days

You can also change the rotation speed to 1000 days instead of 365.

I know that by playing with the distance will show a change in the weather...it will get a lot more cold...polar caps might reach the equator and etc...

On the rotation period...i don't know if it will change a lot...i think also if you play with the tilt of the planet it might affect the polar caps

but creationist wont like you.

[JMBuilder]

Honestly, I don't see why they would get mad. I'm a creationist, but it's not like I ditch science. I just think something created that science.

Should be interesting. :/

[nastydrm]

Thank you very much for your response. My questions were clearly answered - so now there's only one thing to do. Cheers!!!

I'll resist the temptation to go into logical fallacies and will leave that discussion to the Atheist Experience.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

[emarksmi]

Actually, you can have a lot of fun with this.  You can set the orbital distance wherever you want and then arbitrarily change the rotational speed so you get 1000 days per year.  In other words, you could put the Earth at Mercury's distance and have it spinning very fast or stick it out at Pluto's distance and have it spinning very slowly.

And, of course, you could keep the 24 hour day and change the orbital distance to make a 1000 day year.