A little history/geography quiz

[CGM]

Things are quiet in here, so a bit off history/geo.

What is the speed of Earth's rotation?

The moons orbital speed of earth?

The Earth around the Sun?

roughly.

ok, not a lot happening at my place, so here goes on the other two questions.

OK, I seem to recall froom my Rick Hansen post that the circumference of the earth is about 45,000, can't remember if it was miles or kilometeres, so I'll say kilometers. Seeing as how the earth completes a rotation in 24 hours, that makes the rotational velocity of the earth 45,000/24 = 1,875 km/h no wonder it's so fucking windy all the time.

Also I seem to recall that the distance fom the moon to the earth is about 140,000 miles, multiply by 1.6 to get 224,000 km. add to that the radius of the earth, which is circumference / (2* pi) = 7,162 km. So the distance from the moon to the center of the erth is 231,162 km.

Therefore, the circumference of the moon's orbit around the earth 2 * pi * 231,162 = 1,452,437 km. Now I think that one revolution of the moon around the earth is marked by a cycle of moon phases, which is 28 days, therefore...

the orbital velocity of the moon around the earth is approximately

1,452,437 / (28*24) = 2,161 km/h approximately.

[Youngblood]

Ya these weren`t the best questions. Ima a rookie here, so forgive me.

I like reading your math in figuring them out. I guess I was expecting it to be more of a recall thing, but prob. unless someone just recently had a highschool science class with them, or is a bonafide astrophysicist that precise recall isn`t going to be there. Plus there are variables like current latitude to consider etc. Was just looking for a ballpark...and at 1875 km/h that is fairly close to the mean speed based at the equator of just over 1000 mph or roughly 1600 km/h. Well done.

Wikipedia has the moon travelling at an orbital speed 1.022 km/s so that would equate to approx. 3700 km/h.

[CGM]

Ya these weren`t the best questions. Ima a rookie here, so forgive me.

I like reading your math in figuring them out. I guess I was expecting it to be more of a recall thing, but prob. unless someone just recently had a highschool science class with them, or is a bonafide astrophysicist that precise recall isn`t going to be there. Plus there are variables like current latitude to consider etc. Was just looking for a ballpark...and at 1875 km/h that is fairly close to the mean speed based at the equator of just over 1000 mph or roughly 1600 km/h. Well done.

Wikipedia has the moon travelling at an orbital speed 1.022 km/s so that would equate to approx. 3700 km/h.

OK, so clearly I underestimated the distance from the moon to the earth, either that or I over estimated the time it takes for the moon to circle the earth. I'll have to look this stuff up. This has been a useful thread for learning things.

Knowing how to use pi, and also trigonometry, are two of the more useful math topics you will learn have learned in school.

[CGM]

March 27, 1977 saw the world's deadliest ever air accident, when two Boeing 747s collided at an airport, killing 583 people. Name the location.

[Andre]

Midair.

[CGM]

Ha Ha no, actually it happened on the ground, on the runway. Nice try though.

[Youngblood]

I watch airplane accident docu's all the time on Discovery channel, and know a fair bit about this...the 3 exits, various miscommunications, the back up of air traffic etc, even can picture in my head the recreation of it...but cannot remember where it was.

Is not North America though.