Tuesday, December 21, 2010

At what speed does Earth revolve around the Sun ?

Have you ever wondered at what speed does out Earth revolve around the sun ?
No, then I'm surprised !!  As I always used to wonder about the rotation speed of the Earth around the sun.
And if your answer is yes, then probably you might not be knowing the speed, right ?
Now, Let's calculate the speed of Earth's with which it rotates around the sun, which we call it as one complete revolution.
We know that Earth takes 1 year to revolve around the sun, that is, time,t= 8765.813 hours.
Also, we know that the average distance between Sun and the Earth is 149,597,890 km, that is we can take that value as radius of a cirlce on which Earth revolve, then, Circumference of the circle, that is,
Distance travelled by Earth in one year, S=2*pi*149,597,890 km (assuming the the path of Earth in which it revolves is circle)
 = 940329594.3 km (approximately)

Note: Here I've used the value of pi as 22/7 ( I know it is not accurate value, though we take in practice for calculation :)
Now we know that velocity or speed, v =  S/t
=> v = 940329594.3 km / 8765.813 hours = 107272 km/hr (approximately)
That is, the speed at Earth revolve around the Sun, that is Earth's revolution speed, is 66655.73 miles per hour (= 107272 km/hr).

Isn't it very fast ?? And indeed the fact is that is too fast !!
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2 comments:

  1. 107272 km/hr wow, that a lot of it

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  2. hi, i liked the way you have approached to solve this one, but to the best of what i know, the orbits of the earth are oval shaped and not circular.... So you actually can't take the distance as perpendicular and calculate the circumference

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