Venus is the closest planet to Earth, right?... well no.

Today in class I collected some data to support the idea that Venus is in fact NOT the closest planet to Earth.

	Mercury (distance from Earth in AU)	Venus (distance from Earth in AU)	Mars (distance from Earth in AU)
1	1.027	0.7772	2.583
2	1.057	0.5664	1.329
3	1.139	1.722	0.6522
4	0.5899	1.606	2.107
5	1.448	0.2895	0.6620
6	0.7966	0.6962	2.256
7	1.333	1.721	1.505
8	1.149	0.9080	2.423
9	0.9676	0.3369	2.543
10	0.8854	1.717	0.5543
Average	1.039	1.034	1.662

Mercury: 1.039 AU = 155.4 million km

Venus: 1.034 AU = 154.6 million km

Mars: 1.662 AU = 248.6 million km

What does this data mean? How was it collected?

Using the website https://theskylive.com/ I visited the "How Far is Mercury from Earth?" page where I found a graph representing the distance of Mercury from Earth over a period from 2020-2021.

I randomly picked 10 points from this graph and then averaged them to get the value shown in the table above... I then did the same for both Venus and Mars.

I then converted these averaged values from AU into million km... These values show the distance the planets are away from Earth ON AVERAGE.

As you might see... Venus is closer to Earth based on this batch of data... though Mercury is not vey far behind. However, the vast majority of students in my class calculated Mercury's value to be smaller than Venus'... This is correct. Though my values were close, if I were to ever do this again I would be more random with the chosen values and pick more points on the graph.

If this isn't enough to prove that Mercury is closer... Take a look at this image.

Grey circles: Mercury in orbit

Orange circles: Venus in orbit

Blue circle: Earth

Yellow circle: The Sun

Green lines: Distance (Earth to Mercury)

Pink lines: Distance (Earth to Venus)

In this image, the distance from both Venus and Mercury to Earth is demonstrated... If calculated, the average of green lines (distance from Earth to Mercury) are shorter than the average of the pink lines (distance from Earth to Venus). This means that on average Mercury is a shorter distance away from Earth than Venus!