Cosmic Calendar

Objectives

• To gain a perspective of the concept of time
• To study universal history from the moment of creation
• To use mathematical skills to determine cosmic perspective

Time is one of the most difficult concepts for anyone to comprehend.  Children can't comprehend even the most basic of concepts such as yesterday and today and tomorrow, let alone next year or "one hundred years ago".  When we, as adults, begin to talk about billions of years, well our minds are blown!  We just have no context for that many years.  Notes.

Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer, tried to make this concept more manageable by fitting the history of the universe into a year's time. 

Today, we'll use a formula to calculate the key events of earth's history and place them on a calendar.

Think about the school year.  How many days until the next vacation?... the end of the semester?... the end of the school year?....your birthday?  So we'll be trying to place the events of the earth's formation and evolution onto the calendar of a year.

How and when do you think the universe began?  How long ago do you think the first living organism came into being?  How about the first human?

Use the following formula         difference in years x 1 day/12,345,670 years = #days
and then plug the #days into timeanddate.com to determine the day of the year.  I'll give you a more detailed worksheet.

List the events on the calendar.  Try a few together, and then split the rest up amongst yourselves.

What have you concluded about the history of earth?  Is time necessary for evolution to occur?  If so, how much time in the span of 4.5 billion years.

Read this tutorial.