Question

“It takes the Earth 24 hours to complete a full rotation. It takes Mercury approximately 58 days, 15 hours, and 30 minutes to complete a full rotation. How many hours does it take Mercury to complete a full rotation? Show your work using the correct conversion factors”

Answer 1

Based on earth time:

1 day = 24 hours

1 hr = 60 minutes

Let's convert the given information regarding Mercury's rotation into hours only. Let's start with 58 days first.

`58\text{days}*\frac{24hrs}{1\text{day}}=1,392hrs`

Hence, 58 days equals 1,392 hrs.

Moving on to the next given information that is 15 hours, no need to convert this to hours because it is already in hours.

To the next given information that is 30 minutes, let's convert this to hours.

`30mins*\frac{1hr}{60mins\text{ }}=0.5hr\text{ }`

30 minutes is equal to half an hour or 0.5 hr.

From those converted data, we have:

`\begin{gathered} =58days+15hrs+30mins\text{ } \\ =1,392hrs+15hrs+0.5hrs\text{ } \\ =1,407.5hrs\text{ } \end{gathered}`

It takes Mercury 1,407.5 hrs to do a full rotation.