Download What A Long Strange Trip It`s Been

What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been
Do you understand how old the Earth is compared to the recent arrival of humans on Earth? For
example if we compress the age of the Earth (4.6 billion years old) into one hour with the Earth’s
crust first forming at 4.6 billion years ago then the earliest humans (Homo sapiens) appear on a
one hour clock after 59 minutes 59 seconds! Time recedes even deeper into antiquity when we
ponder the age of our Universe of which Earth is just one planet orbiting one star amongst
billions of other stars in our local galaxy, amongst billions of other galaxies within our Universe!
Your task is to convert the dated cosmological events listed below into minutes and order them on
the clock face on the back of this page by to gain a better perspective of the age of our 13.7
billion year old Universe. Best estimates for the age of the Universe are 13.7 billion but we’ll
round it to 14 billion for simplicity. On our clock one min. equals 233.3 million years!
Here’s what to do: To convert each event to minutes set them up as a cross multiple like the
example below for the dinosaur extinction: READ THE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY!
The dinosaurs go extinct at 65,000,000 years, so to find out how many minutes that would be on
our one hour clock do the cross multiplication. There are 60 minutes in 1 hour and the age of the
Universe is 14,000,000,000 years old, so….
x
65,000,000
=
60
14,000,000,000
so…cancel zeros and you get…
x
65
=
14,000 60
so…
39
3,900
= x, cancel zeros…
= x …so x equals 0.278 min.
140
14,000
Now find the time on the one hour clock by subtracting 0.278 from 60 minutes, so…
60 – 0.278 = 59.72 minutes. So dinosaurs are extinct about a quarter second before the
end of the hour on our one hour clock!
3,900 = 14,000(x)
so….
Convert the Universe time to minutes and then find their time on the clock
Event
Universe Time in Years
Big Bang
14,000,000,000
First Stars Born
13,600,000,000
First Galaxies Form
13,000,000,000
First Star Clusters in Galaxies 12,000,000,000
Sun & Solar System Form
4,500,000,000
First Life on Earth
4,000,000,000
First Oxygen & Breathing Life 3,500,000,000
First Animals
700,000,000
First Dinosaurs
250,000,000
First Mammals
200,000,000
Dinosaur Extinction
65,000,000
Homo sapiens
350,000
First Human Hunter-Gatherer Groups
30,000
Ptolemy Makes First Universe Model
2,000
Minutes
Time On Clock
Write the event next to the time on the outside of the clock face and draw a line to the
correct time for the event on the clock face.