Why do the outer planets take so much longer to orbit the sun than the inner planets?

Answer 1

Clara Avalos

Pl antes obeys Kepler's 3rd law.

The Law of Periods: The square of the period of any planet is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit.
Kepler's Laws - HyperPhysics

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Answer 2

Nova Adams

The outer planets take longer to orbit the Sun because they are farther away from it and thus have a larger distance to travel in their elliptical orbits. According to Kepler's third law of planetary motion, the time it takes for a planet to orbit the Sun is proportional to the semi-major axis of its orbit. Therefore, the outer planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, which have larger semi-major axes, take longer to complete one orbit compared to the inner planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.