Mercury is 24,900,000 km away from the sun. Explain how you found this answer.
2007-11-15 13:04:20 · 4 answers · asked by juwiegorawr 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Mercury has the most eccentric orbit of all the planets. So I will use two figures for distance. The distance from the sun ranges from 46 million km to 70 million km.
The speed of light speed is 1,079,252,848.8 km/hr.
I lost my calculator so this is with the crappy one that came with the operating system.
46 x10e6 / 1,079,252,848 km/hr = 0.042 hrs = 152 sec or a little more than 2 minutes for the closest approach.
70,000,000 km / 1,079,252,848 km = 0.0648 hrs = 3.89 min = 233.49 sec a little under 4 minutes for the maximum distance.
So T being the time it takes for the sunlight to reach mercury varies between 2min < T < 4min..
2007-11-15 14:07:54 · answer #1 · answered by TicToc.... 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Take the distance (24,900,000 km) and divide by the speed of light (299,792 kilometers per second) to get the time in seconds for light to travel from the sun to Mercury.
2007-11-15 21:14:42 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Light travels about 299,000 km/sec
Divide the distance by speed: 24,900,000km/ 299,000 km/sec = about 83 seconds....
(Actually, Mercury's about 58,000,000 km from the sun) so it takes about 163 seconds - not quite 3 minutes- for the sun's light to reach Mercury. I'm not sure where you got the 24,900,000Km from)
2007-11-15 21:12:14 · answer #3 · answered by quantumclaustrophobe 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
light travels at aproximately 3x10^ 8 meters/second or 3x10^5 km/second ( google it :-) )
luse the formula distance = velocity x time
time = (distance) / (velocity)
use the distance given in the problem and for the velocity use the speed of light.
You should get the answer from that.
2007-11-15 21:15:29 · answer #4 · answered by khaoticwarchild 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋