AU: Mercury

1
AU Mercury (our final frontier)
By Mark and Sam
4/15/04
2
The Problem
Currently the AU in use today is 93,000,000 miles
(distance from Sun to Earth). We believe that we
have discovered an easier to use AU. Our
mission is to introduce our new and improved AU.
We will also bring up disadvantages and
advantages.
3
We chose Mercury for a baseline AU because we
knew that it was closest to the sun. Therefore
all other distances would be more than one. To
find the distance in AU for other planets beside
Mercury we divided the other planets distance
from the sun by Mercurys distance from the sun.

4
Facts
5
Pros

• Because Mercury is the closest to the Sun, there
  are no fractions of one AU.
• AUs are approximately a multiple or factor of 25.
• All AUs are user friendly.
• AUs are easy to find for all of the planets.

6
Cons

• AUs are relatively large numbers.
• Scientists worldwide would have to rewrite
  equations, textbooks, etc.

7
Conclusion
We believe that Mercury as a baseline for an AU
far surpasses the usefulness of the Earth
baseline AU.
Image of Mercury found at http//www.rrtearoom.co
m/...e/A87436/Mercury.jpg This has been a
Mallagher Production