1999
Orbits
May 1999


“Orbits,” Friend, May 1999, 35

Orbits

A young astronaut bragged to his father that he’d made twenty trips around the Earth. Not impressed, his father replied, “Well, I myself have made fifty trips around the sun.”

The young man’s father had never been an astronaut, so how could this be true?

Answer:

  • It takes one year for the Earth to go around the sun. If the astronaut’s father is fifty years old, he has made fifty trips around the sun.