Every moment of every day, light pours out from the Sun at the center of our solar system and travels to Earth. It does not arrive at Earth instantaneously though; it takes time to get here. Your task is to figure out how long it takes for light to travel from the Sun to Earth.
The formula for the velocity of an object is , where v is the velocity of the object, d is the distance traveled, and t is the time elapsed while that distance is traveled. If you had only this formula to work with, what should your first step be in determining how long it takes for light to reach Earth from the Sun? What additional information do you need to calculate this?
Solve for the variable you are looking for. Show your work.
distance = speed times time
so
time in seconds = distance in meters / speed in meters/second
we need to know:
1. the speed of light (about 3*10^8 meters/s)
2. the distance from earth to sun (about
1.5*10^11 meters
To determine how long it takes for light to travel from the Sun to Earth using the velocity formula (v = d/t), we need to isolate the variable we are looking for, which is time (t).
To do this, we rearrange the formula as follows:
t = d/v
In this case, the distance traveled is from the Sun to Earth, so we need to find the value of this distance (d). The additional information we need is the velocity of light (v).
The speed of light in a vacuum is approximately 299,792,458 meters per second (m/s). This value represents the velocity of light (v) that we can use in our formula.
Now, we need to determine the distance between the Sun and Earth (d). The average distance from the Sun to Earth is approximately 149,597,870.7 kilometers (km), or 149,597,870,700 meters (m).
We can now substitute the values into the formula:
t = d/v
t = 149,597,870,700 m / 299,792,458 m/s
Performing the calculation:
t ≈ 499.0 seconds
Therefore, it takes approximately 499 seconds (or about 8 minutes and 19 seconds) for light to travel from the Sun to Earth.