11/13/2022 0 Comments Calculate the average speed of the earth in its orbit in kilometers per secondGravity (m/s 2 or ft/s 2) - The gravitational acceleration on the surface at the equator in meters per second squared or feet per second squared, including the effects of rotation. Strictly speaking tons are measures of weight, not mass, but are used here to represent the mass of one ton of material under Earth gravity.ĭiameter (km or miles) - The diameter of the planet at the equator, the distance through the center of the planet from one point on the equator to the opposite side, in kilometers or miles.ĭensity (kg/m 3 or lbs/ft 3) - The average density (mass divided by volume) of the whole planet (not including the atmosphere for the terrestrial planets) in kilograms per cubic meter or pounds per cubic foot. This page was last updated on February 28, 2016.Mass (10 24kg or 10 21tons) - This is the mass of the planet in septillion (1 followed by 24 zeros) kilograms or sextillion (1 followed by 21 zeros) tons. We are better off to stick with the first number we got - the average speed. (For more information on how the Earth's orbital speed varies over the course of a year, please see this answer.) Unless you specified a certain date, this means I cannot give you a precise value for the speed of the Earth assuming its orbit is an ellipse. This means that when the Earth is closer to the Sun (which happens in early January, about two weeks after the northern winter solstice) it's moving faster than when it is farther away. This is because Kepler's second law says that on its orbit, a planet will sweep equal areas in equal amounts of time. Now if you want to calculate the speed of the Earth on its orbit without assuming it is a circle, it is another ball game! First of all, I cannot give you a precise answer, because the speed of the Earth changes all the time as the Earth moves around the Sun. And as for the average Earth-Sun distance, the true value changes slightly over time due to gravitational perturbations from the other planets, so there really isn't much point in using a more precise value than the one given above. This means it is almost a circle, making our approximation valid. So under the one approximation that was made, the calculation couldn't really be more 'precise'. It turns out that the orbit of the Earth right now has an eccentricity of about 0.017. The eccentricity of an ellipse is a number that varies between 0 and 1, 0 being a perfect circle, and close to 1 being a very flattened ellipse. They are described by their 'eccentricity', which tells us how flattened they are. But not all ellipses come in the same shape. One of Kepler's laws describing planetary motions states that all orbits are ellipses. This is in fact a very good approximation. The only approximation I did in the calculation I sent you is assuming that the orbit of the Earth is circular. In the case of your question about the speed of the Earth around the Sun, there isn't really a more 'precise' answer. Thanks for your explanation, but I was hoping for an explanation a little more precise, since I already knew the one you gave. So the Earth moves at about 110,000 km/h around the Sun (which is about one thousand times faster than the typical speed of a car on a highway!) Speed = 107,000 km/h (or, if you prefer, 67,000 miles per hour) This means that the speed is about:Īnd if we convert that to more meaningful units (knowing that there are, on average, about 365.25 days in a year, and 24 hours per day) we get: (Astronomers call this an astronomical unit, or AU for short.) Therefore, in one year, the Earth travels a distance of 2×π×(149,600,000 km). The average distance from the Earth to the Sun is about 149,600,000 km. (Remember, the circumference of a circle is equal to 2×π×radius.) So the distance traveled in one year is just the circumference of the circle. To do that we will assume that the orbit of the Earth is circular (which is not exactly right, it is more like an ellipse, but for our purpose a circle is close enough). So, in order to know the speed, we just have to figure out the distance traveled by the Earth when it goes once around the Sun. We also know that the time it takes for the Earth to go once around the Sun is one year. If we reverse that, we get that the average speed is equal to the distance traveled over the time taken. First of all we know that in general, the distance you travel equals the speed at which you travel multiplied by the time (duration) of travel. In other units, that's about 19 miles per second, or 67,000 miles per hour, or 110,000 kilometers per hour (110 million meters per hour). Short version: Earth's average orbital speed is about 30 kilometers per second.
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