Question

A certain satellite orbiting Earth has a speed of about 17,000 miles/hour. What is its approximate speed expressed to the correct number of significant figures in kilometers/second? One kilometer is about 0.62 mile, and there are 3,600 seconds in an hour.

Answer 1

Answer:- The speed of the satellite is 7.6
`(kilometer)/(second)` .

Solution:- It's a unit conversion problem that could be solved using dimensional analysis which is also known as train trail method.

The given speed of the satellite is 17000 miles per hour and we are asked to convert it to kilometers per second.

given:

1 Kilometer = 0.62 mile

1 hour = 3600 second

Let's use this given info and plug in the values to make the set up as:

`17000(mile)/(hour)((1 kilometer)/(0.62 mile))((1 hour)/(3600 second))`

= 7.616
`(kilometer)/(second)`

We round the answer to two significant figures, since the given number(17000) has only two significant figures.

Hence, the speed of the satellite is 7.6
`(kilometer)/(second)` .