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Speed of earth around the sun


Pradeepkumar

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I want to know the exact velocity with which the Earth is revolving around the Sun.

 

 

I tried out a simple experiment.The shadow of a wall goes on increasing during sunset(Evening), isn't it. I took a small scale and measured the distance travelled by the shadow of that wall in 1 min(from a particular point to another point)So i calculated the speed with which the shadow was moving, which ultimately means the speed with which the earth revolves around the sun

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I think the dominant term that drives the moving of the shadow is the rotation of earth around an axis through earth, not the rotation of earth around the sun. It would be interesting to see if you can make a measurement that precise that after your substracted the term for earth rotation around itself you get a remainder that indeed gives stems from the rotation of earth around the sun. What values did you measure and what calculation did you do to get to your result, btw?

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I tried out a simple experiment.

:doh: Yeah, that was an experiment to measure the speed the Earth rotates around its own axis, not the sun. But congrats on a good experiment though. :)

 

It takes 1 year for the Earth to orbit the sun (as that is what a year is defined as :rolleyes: ). SO we know that the Earth completes a 360 degree arc every 365.25 days. What we now need is the distance we are from the sun, then we can do some calculations that tells us the distance we travelled in that time.

 

If we know the distance and we know the time we have the speed (and can easily convert it to any unit system you like) of the Earth's orbit.

 

To work out the distance to the sun is fairly easy. What you need to do is measure the angle of the sun from two different locations (the further apart the better) simultaneously. You can then use trigonometry to work out the distance to the sun.

 

It would be best to do this at different times of the year so as to get an average distance to the sun (as the Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle).

 

Once you have the distance to the sun, you have the diameter of the orbit and can therefore work out the circumference (2 * Pi * Radius = Diameter).

 

So you have the distance the Earth travels (calculated form the radius of the orbit) and we know the time (365.25 days). We can then work out the speed of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. :D

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