Question

Earth and sun circumference and surface areas Write a program that finds:

1) our planet's (equatorial) circumference. Earth's diameter is approximately 8,000 miles, and the general formula for the circumference of a circle is C=π∗d My intention is for you to do this with a function. The prototype might, for example, be: double calculateCircumference (double diameter): Call this function a second time to calculate and display the circumference of the Sun (whose diameter you can look up and is approximately 100 times that of Earths).
a) The distance between time zones along the equator is approximately 1,000 miles. Can you use this information to calculate and display the number of hours in a day?

Answer 1

The circumference of Earth is calculated using the diameter of 8,000 miles, while the Sun's circumference is found using a diameter 100 times that. The time zones concept validates the 24 hours in a day based on Earth's equatorial circumference.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate the circumference of Earth and the Sun, we can use the function calculateCircumference(diameter) which applies the formula C = π × d, where C is the circumference and d is the diameter.

1) Earth's circumference is calculated with the diameter of approximately 8,000 miles. Thus, the equatorial circumference of Earth is:

calculateCircumference(8000) = π × 8000 ≈ 25,132 miles

2) For the Sun, with a diameter approximately 100 times that of Earth's, the circumference calculates to:

calculateCircumference(8000 × 100) = π × 800,000 ≈ 2,513,274 miles

a) With each time zone being approximately 1,000 miles apart at the equator, and the full circumference of Earth being 25,132 miles, we can calculate the number of hours in a day:

25,132 miles / 1,000 miles per time zone = 25.132 time zones

As we know there are 24 hours in a day, this calculation confirms the existence of 24 time zones, each corresponding to one hour.