Question

The Sun is approximately 1,400 million kilometers from the planet Saturn, and light from the Sun travels to Saturn at the rate of approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. Approximately how many minutes does it take for light to travel from the Sun to Saturn?

Answer 1

Light takes 77 minutes to travel from the Sun to Saturn.

Step-by-step explanation:

The equation for the average velocity can be used to estimate the time that light will take to travel from the Sun to Saturn. The average velocity is defined as:

`v = (d)/(t)` (1)

Where v is the velocity, d is the covered distance and t is the time.

Equation 1 can be rewritten for t to get:

`t = (d)/(v)`

It is necessary to express the speed of light in terms of minutes:

`300000 (Km)/(s) . (60 s)/(1 min)` ⇒
`1.8x10^(7)` Km/min

`t = (1.4x10^(9) Km)/(1.8x10^(7) Km/min)`

`t = 77 min`

It is known that light takes 8,3 minutes to go from the Sun to the Earth, where the distance between each other is 150.000.000 Kilometers.