science

[morgangilson]

how long does light take to get from sun to earth?

[Loosehead]

Around 8 minutes

[Loosehead]

I just worked it out, 8.3mins, relax nitpickers! 

[stevie21]

I didn't even attempt to work it out, I just looked at the index of Hawking's "A Brief History Of Time" as I knew it was in there.
His "8 minutes" obviously doesn't satisfy the nitpickers.

[kempie]

Hello fellow nitpickers!

Distance Sun→Earth ranges from 1.47x10^11 metres to 1.52x10^11 metres (mean 1.495x10^11 m).

Speed of light = 2.998x10^8 m/s

Average Time = distance / speed = 498.6 secs or 8 mins 18.6 secs

[jake-the-peg]

I notice you haven't taken account of the reduction of the speed of light in air as it enters the earth's atmosphere!

That's a reduction of 0.015 % over the last .005% of the journey!

:c)

[kempie]

Well spotted.

I amend my answer to 498.60000000000000000000001 secs

:-P

[Peter Pedant]

god I feel old.....everyone is doing the calculation in metric (rationalised MKS or SI) and not CGS which I was inflicted with......

PP

[kempie]

PP - you always express yourself with great poise

(= 1 dyne-second per square centimetre)

[Gef]

Not as old as I feel. In six years at secondary school I had two years of imperial units (foot poundals etc) then two years of cgs (ergs etc) followed by two years of mks (joules etc).

However, 93 million miles divided by 186000 miles per second still gives the same answer of 8.3 minutes!

[landie]

It doesn't matter to me. I wait until it is well above the horizon before emerging.

When the Met Office say that sunrise is at a certain time of day are they always 8.3 minutes out?