Activities about Astrology
By Andrew Fraknoi
Foothill College
©Copyright 1993. Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Permission to reproduce for non-commercial use is hereby granted.
1. Finding Your Sun Constellation and Your
Sun Sign
A sample activity that can lead into a good
discussion of precession (see article on
Astrology), and its meaning for astrology is to
have students sue their birthdays to determine
both their astrological sun sign and the
constellation where the Sun actually was when
they were born. The data you need is given in
Table 1.
Many students will find that their sign is NOT
the same as their constellation. A few, whose
birthdays are very close to the transition dates
between signs will find that their sign and
constellation are still the same. (They have to
wait a few hundred years to see the shift! Tell
them to take their vitamins.)
Note that the most unfortunate students are
those born between November 29th and
December 17th. Between those dates the Sun is
located in none of the 12 zodiac constellations –
instead it is in the constellation Ophiuchus, which
the astrologers chose not to include in the zodiac
because 12 was considered a much luckier number
than 13.
2. Testing Astrology with the Birthdays of the
Presidents
Even those astrologers who claim that a full
astrological forecast requires them to study the
positions of many other celestial bodies besides
the Sun’s position will tell you that the Sun sign is
a crucial factor for the occupation a person
chooses and a strong determinant of overall
personality.
If this is so, we can test this hypothesis by
examining the birthdates of the 43 men who have
held the job of President of the United States.
We all know it takes a certain kind of personality
to be president (outgoing, well-spoken, ambitious)
and if personality and occupation are strongly
affected by sun-sing, we should find that the
birthdays of the Presidents are not randomly
distributed among the zodiac signs, but a cluster in
one (or a few) of them.
Table 1:
Constellations versus Signs
Constellation
/Sign
Aries
Taurus
Gemini
Cancer
Leo
Virgo
Libra
Scorpius
Ophiuchus
Sagittarius
Capricornus
Aquarius
Pisces
Astrological
Dates
Dates for the Actual
Location of the Sun
3/21 - 4/19
4/20 - 5/20
5/21 - 6/20
6/21 - 7/22
7/23 - 8/22
8/23 - 9/22
9/23 - 10/22
10/31 - 11/21
None
11/22 - 12/21
12/22 - 1/19
1/20 - 2/18
2/19 - 3/20
4/18 - 5/12
5/13 - 6/20
6/21 - 7/19
7/20 - 8/9
8/10 - 9/5
9/6 - 10/29
10/30 - 11/22
11/23 - 11/28
11/29 - 12/17
12/18 - 1/18
1/19 - 2/15
2/16 - 3/11
3/12 - 4/17
Table 2 has the President’s birthdays listed.
Using column A of Table 1, have students find in
which zodiac sign each President belongs. Then,
ask them to think about their results
How many in: Aries: _______
Taurus:
_______
Gemini: _______
Cancer: _______
Leo: _______ Virgo:
_______
Libra: _______ Scorpius:
_______
Capricornus: _______
Aquarius:
_______
Pisces: _______
Sign with the largest number of Presidents:
_________________ How many: _______
Sign with the smallest number:
_________________ How many: _______
Table 2:
Birthdays of the Presidents
George Washington
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
John Quincy Adams
Andrew Jackson
Martin Van Buren
William Henry Harrison
John Tyler
James K. Polk
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Feb 22, 1732
Oct 30, 1735
Apr 13, 1743
Mar 16, 1751
Apr 28, 1758
July 11, 1767
Mar 15, 1767
Dec 5, 1782
Feb 9, 1773
Mar 29, 1790
Nov 2, 1795
Nov 24, 1784
Jan 7, 1800
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Franklin Roosevelt
Harry S. Truman
Dwight Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Mar 18, 1837
Aug 20, 1833
Jan 29, 1843
Oct 27, 1858
Sep 15, 1857
Dec 28, 1856
Nov 2, 1865
July 4, 1872
Aug 10, 1874
Jan 30, 1882
May 8, 1884
Oct 14, 1890
May 29, 1917
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant
Rutherford B. Hayes
James A. Garfield
Chester Arthur
Nov 23, 1804
Apr 23, 1791
Feb 12, 1809
Dec 29, 1808
Apr 27, 1822
Oct 4, 1822
Nov 19, 1831
Oct 5, 1829
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama
Aug. 27, 1908
Jan. 9, 1913
July 1, 1913
Oct. 1, 1924
Feb. 6, 1911
June 12, 1924
Aug. 19, 1924
July 6, 1946
Aug. 4, 1961
3. Horoscopes from Different Astrologers
If your students are old enough, ask them to
bring in newspapers with astrology columns for a
given day from as large a number of cities as
possible. Otherwise, you may need to purchase the
newspapers yourself. It’s very important (for
psychological impact) that the newspaper be taken
apart and any horoscopes cut out in full view of the
students.
Assign ach newspaper to a group of students and
then ask one member of each group to read aloud
the horoscope of a selected student (this could be
someone who got the highest or lowest grade on
the last science exam, for example.
How well do the predictions of different
astrologer agree for that student’s sign. Have the
students discuss the reasons for the
discrepancies. (How specific are the newspaper
statement? Could they apply to a lot of different
people?)
If we are considering
43 presidents, and they
were randomly
distributed among the
12 signs of the zodiac,
how many would you
expect in each sign:
_______
(average
# expected per sign)
From this test, would
you say the birth dates
of the Presidents are
strongly clustered in one
or a few signs?
_________________
4. Mixed-up Horoscopes
Get a newspaper for a recent day (yesterday or
the past weekend) that features an astrology
column. (It’s best to use a paper with an astrology
column that your students would not normally see,
so they are not likely to have read the horoscopes.)
Make a copy of the full column for yourself and
put it aside. Then cut off the dates and signs
from each description on the original, and delete or
cover up any telltale references to the sign like,
“you’re a real lion at times.” Mix up the
descriptions, and give each one a number from 1 to
12. Transfer these numbers to your copy for
future reference. Distribute the number (but
otherwise unlabeled) paragraphs to the students.
Each student should write his/her name and
birthday on the sheet and then select and circle
the one description that best fits the day in
question. (Be sure you remind them of the day the
horoscopes apply to – e.g. yesterday or this past
Saturday.)
Ask students to predict how this experiment
will turnout. (Provided everyone remembers the
day in question clearly and assuming sun-sign
astrology predicts one’s day pretty well, students
should in general be able to find their own
paragraph. But if chance instead of the stars
governs the composition of those descriptions, we
would expect that only one out of 2 of the
students would have selected the description for
their own signs.)
To prevent sudden changes of answers, some
people like to ask students to exchange papers at
this point. Then, you can put the signs and
birthdates associated with each numbered
paragraph on the board and ask students to tally
the number of matches. Have them discuss the
results.
WARNING: With the small numbers of
students in one class, it often happens by chance
that there are a few more “hits” than one would
expect. If students get intrigued by such extra
hits, one way to check is to extend the test to
other students or school staff.
This resource is part of Project ASTRO, a program to enhance science
education through partnerships between teachers and astronomers.
Sponsored by the Astronomic Society of the Pacific (ASP), the project is
funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
For more information or the right to reproduce this material, write: Project
ASTRO, ASP, 390 Ashton Ave., San Francisco, CA 94112 or call 415.337.1100;
https://www.astrosociety.org/education/k12-educators/project-astro/