The distance to the moon is 250,000 miles. Calculate the distance in kilometers.
250,000mi x 1.61km/1mi =402,500 km
But the correct answer is supposed to be 408,500km. Why am I 6000 short?
The answer in your book/notes must be wrong. Go to google.com and type in "250,000 to km" without the quotation marks and hit the enter button. The answer is 402,336. Your 402,500 km is correct using the 1.61 km/mi factor. Google uses 1.609344 km/mile
ok thank you
To calculate the distance from miles to kilometers, you correctly used the conversion factor of 1.61 km per 1 mile. Multiplying 250,000 miles by 1.61 km/mile should give you the correct answer of 402,500 km.
However, it seems that you are expecting an answer of 408,500 km instead. To determine why your expected answer is different, we need to verify if the given conversion factor is accurate. Let's check if there might be an updated conversion factor or additional information.
Upon reviewing the International System of Units (SI) conversion factors, it is confirmed that 1 mile is equal to 1.60934 kilometers, rather than 1.61 km. So, let's recalculate using the correct conversion factor:
250,000 mi x 1.60934 km/1 mi = 402,335 km
As you can see, the correct distance from miles to kilometers is approximately 402,335 km. Therefore, the difference of 6,165 km might be due to a variation in the conversion factor or a rounding error in the expected answer of 408,500 km.