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beauty lux · Jan 10, 2009, 02:39 PM

Okay.thank you
Can you stand for another question.(chemistry worksheet but this is the last question.) not about the same question though.

Curlyben · Jan 10, 2009, 02:40 PM

Post it up on a new thread and we'll see what can be done.
I don't mind guiding, but I won't do the work for you.

Show us what you have tried and we're all good.

beauty lux · Jan 10, 2009, 02:44 PM

Okay this question is even more confusing then the first one.
Here it is.

The distance around the earth to the sun is apporximately 25,000 miles. Calculate how many times your paper clip chain could wrap around the earth.

How would you begin this problem?

Curlyben · Jan 10, 2009, 02:47 PM

Right then

I have put these two together as they are a follow on.

Is that how the question is written as it's seems slightly confused.
After all it mentions earth to sun and then earth on it's own.

beauty lux · Jan 10, 2009, 03:11 PM

Yeah.. I accidentally looked on the other problem.
It is written without the sun stuff.

The distance around the earth is approximately 25,000 miles. Calculate how many times your paper clip chain could wrap around the earth.

That's how it is really written.

Curlyben · Jan 10, 2009, 03:12 PM

OK so again break it down.

Forget actual numbers for now as this will get slightly messy.

So how many inches in a mile ?

beauty lux · Jan 10, 2009, 03:14 PM

Honestly I don't know..
I do know that there is 5280ft in a mile and there's 12inches in a foot.. so would I mutliply 5280 and 12 or something else?

Curlyben · Jan 10, 2009, 03:16 PM

Yep that's dead right.
Here's a whole write up about it: inches

Interesting in a geeky kind of way ;)

So we then need to convert the Paperclip mole inches into miles.

beauty lux · Jan 10, 2009, 03:19 PM

Okay. So there's 63,360inches in a mile. So from there would I... okay.confused

Curlyben · Jan 10, 2009, 03:21 PM

Hint:

$Inches/conversion = Miles$

Make sense ?

beauty lux · Jan 10, 2009, 03:22 PM

Yeah but how would the paper clips fit into all of it?

Curlyben · Jan 10, 2009, 03:24 PM

Well we know the length, in inches, of a mole of paperclips.
So we need to convert that to miles and divide by the circumference of the earth.

You following this ?
Told you it gets messy

This is one reason the SI units of measure, e.g. cm, kg, km, etc...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_units

beauty lux · Jan 10, 2009, 03:29 PM

So would I multiply the paperclips to 25,000 and divide the answer by 63360?

Curlyben · Jan 10, 2009, 03:35 PM

almost.

You need to convert the paperclips to miles.

$Paperclips/63360 = miles$

Then divide the 25,000 by the paperclip miles above, or the other way round.

beauty lux · Jan 10, 2009, 03:39 PM

Okay I did that and it came up zero..
It started with .0001895*10 to the 23/25000

Would I take the leading zeros away or no?

Capuchin · Jan 10, 2009, 03:39 PM

You need to divied the length of your paperclips in inches by 63360 to get the length of your paperclips in miles.

THEN you divide that answer by 25,000 to get the number of times the paperclip chain will wrap around the Earth.

Once you've done that, sit back a little bit and make sure you understand why we're dividing here.

If you don't I could explain it a bit more in depth. (please ask! )

beauty lux · Jan 10, 2009, 03:47 PM

So, would I take 12.04/63360/25000?

beauty lux · Jan 10, 2009, 03:49 PM

Would the answer be .0327716*10 to the 23?

Curlyben · Jan 10, 2009, 03:52 PM

Remember the actual answer isn't all that important.
How you got there is what the teacher is looking for.

BTW, errr the number doesn't look right ;)

Capuchin · Jan 10, 2009, 03:53 PM

No, think about it, you're dividing by $10^5$ twice, so the answer will be somewhere close to $10^{(23-5-5)} = 10^{13}$ .
Your answer is about $10^{21}$ .
It's important to use quick mental calculations like this to make sure your answer sounds sensible.