does anyone no how far it is from grand blanc, michigan to fallujah, iraq?

Question

this is a class project for my son's 2nd grade class.thanks

Answer 1

Safrodin's 6300 miles, provided by Google Earth Measurement, looks pretty good, but this also looks like a pretty good math problem for me.

Being from Michigan, I know Grand Blanc is just south of Flint. Google says it's at latitude 42.911 degrees north, and longitude 83.627 degrees west.

My map shows Al Fallujah several miles west of Baghdad. Google says it's at latitude 33.356 degrees north, and longitude 43.783 degrees east.

Some fairly complicated trigonometry, which made the problem interesting for me, but which I did not learn in the second grade, shows that the earth's "central angle" between Grand Blanc and Fallujah is 89.84 degrees -- very nearly a right angle.

This central angle connects the center of the earth with Grand Blanc and Fallujah like the angle and sides of a large piece of pie, where the center of the pie is the center of the earth, and the circular crust of the pie is the earth's "great circle" connecting the two cities.

Wikipedia says that the average radius of the earth is 3960 miles -- good for doing "great circle" calculations. Using that, we find that the distance between Grand Blanc and Fallujah is 6,209.45 miles. Round that off to 6210 since neither city is at sea level.

The circumference of the earth is 24,880 miles. If you divide 6210 by 24,880, you get 0.2496, or 24.96%. That means that Fallujah is very nearly a quarter of the way around the world from Grand Blanc.

I think that's a good way to think about it, especially if you're in the second grade.

Interesting, isn't it?

Answer 2

Its arround 6,300 miles