My creative project for the course HNS2250A1 Debunking Pseudoscience is an educational tool that assists me to debunk the pseudoscientific claim or concept of Mercury in retrograde. Mercury in retrograde, as seen from the Earth, is the apparent backward movement of Mercury in its orbit around the sun. However, this is an optical illusion because there is no planet in our solar system that goes in an opposite direction from the other planets (counterclockwise direction). Moreover, through my educational tool, made from clay, I can explain Kepler’s first law which explains that all planets including Earth are orbiting the Sun in an elliptical route. Furthermore, through Kepler’s work, I can show with my educational tool that the Sun is not at the center of the ellipse.
