Can anyone help me find the equation to this problem?

Question

In this microsoft exccel data chart, I have a drilling site-
20.9 degrees longitude west.
4250 meters in water depth.
550 meters of sediment thickness
4800 meters of depth to crust of the ocean floor.
38 millions years of age.

My question is how do I find out the distance from Mid-atlantic ocean ridge in kilometers?

Answer 1

I don't fully understand your question. Are you trying to find (with your data) the distance from your drilling site (at 20.9 degrees W) to the MOR?

My guess is to look at a map and find the location of the mid ocean ridge in longitude and then find the distance from the scale of the map.

If you had another map showing the ages of all the rocks along the ocean floor, you could find the distance from the area that is 38 million years of age to the area that is 0 million years old.

There has to be something else here. You can't just figure this out with what you wrote down.

Answer 2

As others have mentioned, you'll need latitude data to get a good figure.

If you want to do it the ghetto way though, just divide the age of the seafloor basalt by the spreading rate. The latter figure escapes me (especially since it probably hasn't been constant over the past 38 million years), but if it's been at a rate of say, 2.5 cm per year, then that will give you a distance of about 950 km from the ridge axis.

Answer 3

Measure the distance from the MAOR to 20.9 Longitude West. Your problem is that you don't really have a location because you are lacking latitude. If you are only looking for a distance between two points the rest of your information is superfluous.