The recent question about whether the weight of humanity affects the Earth, and an old question by someone who thinks if we all jumped up and down at the same time we could move the Earth, shows how people have no idea of the scale of things.
The Earth is 6 x 10^21 tonnes.
For people who are not familair with powers of 10, that number is 6 with 21 zeroes on the end, or 6 billion trillion tonnes.
If the average human is 50 Kg, the weight of the entire human race is 300 billion Kg
Divide by 1000 for tonnes; that is 300 million tonnes.
That is a pittance compared with the Earth.
If you divide the Earth's mass by the People's mass
6 x 10^21 divided by 3 x 10^8
You come out with 2 x 10^13
That is 20 trillion.
The Earth is 20 trillion times the mass of all the people put together.
2006-10-24 16:30:55 · 4 answers · asked by nick s 6 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
So where is the question , it seems more like a statement.. Or did I miss something? Lets all jump now..
2006-10-24 16:39:37 · answer #1 · answered by Go Wing's 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Part of it is a difficulty with imagining large numbers. Most people don't work with anything much larger than five to six order of magnitude from zero. Anything larger than that gets lost in the calculation.
Another part of it is a lack of education in basic science and mathematics. One tries to extrapolate from everyday experience but, as above, the numbers get too large too fast to be easily comprehended.
2006-10-24 17:03:54 · answer #2 · answered by eriurana 3 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Because the numbers are bigger than anything we can relate to. But we CAN relate to pictures... check this site out. I was STAGGERED to see this and to realize just how small the Earth is...
2006-10-24 17:02:12 · answer #3 · answered by princessmeltdown 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
OKAY, we get it...you are very smart. geeze
2006-10-24 16:39:37 · answer #4 · answered by nessa0505 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋