How fast are we traveling around the galaxy?

[kens]

heya all, i need some help on a homework question.

Here is the question--
We are located about 28000 light-years from the galactic center and we orbit the center once every 230 million years. How fast are we traveling around the galaxy? Give your answer in both km/hr and mi/hr.

Okay, i know that we are trying to find the Speed.
So speed = distance/time.

so, 28000LYR/230 millions years = speed km

my question is, since i know that 1LYR= 9.5x10^12 km,
how do i change the 230 million years to km?... so i can do the problem?

thanks.

 

[Gokul43201]

heya all, i need some help on a homework question.

Henceforth, post your homework questions in the Homework & coursework subform (this would go in Intro Physics).

Here is the question--
We are located about 28000 light-years from the galactic center and we orbit the center once every 230 million years. How fast are we traveling around the galaxy? Give your answer in both km/hr and mi/hr.

Okay, i know that we are trying to find the Speed.
So speed = distance/time.

What distance is this? What does it mean when it says we are orbiting the galactic center?

so, 28000LYR/230 millions years = speed km

Read the question again. What are the units for speed that are specified in the question? km is a unit of distance, so it can not be a unit for speed as well. I suggest you go over the chapter on units carefully, to make sure you understand how they work.

 

[kyle8921]

I can provide the following response:

To answer this question, we first need to convert the distance of 28000 light-years to kilometers. As you correctly stated, 1 light-year is equal to 9.5x10^12 kilometers. Therefore, 28000 light-years is equivalent to 2.66x10^17 kilometers.

Next, we need to convert the time of 230 million years to hours. To do this, we can use the fact that 1 year is equal to 365.25 days and 1 day is equal to 24 hours. Therefore, 230 million years is equal to 230,000,000 x 365.25 x 24 = 5.05x10^15 hours.

Now, we can plug these values into the formula for speed: speed = distance/time. This gives us:

Speed = (2.66x10^17 km)/(5.05x10^15 hours) = 5.27x10^10 km/hr

To convert this to miles per hour, we can use the conversion factor of 1 km = 0.621371 mi. Therefore, the speed in miles per hour is:

Speed = (5.27x10^10 km/hr) x (0.621371 mi/km) = 3.28x10^10 mi/hr

So, we can say that we are traveling around the galaxy at a speed of approximately 5.27x10^10 kilometers per hour or 3.28x10^10 miles per hour. This is a very fast speed and highlights the vast distances and time scales involved in studying our galaxy. I hope this helps with your homework question!