About Chanda Walker Expertise I can answer word problems involving mathematics at the high school and college level. I particularly enjoy calculus word problems. Please don't just type the math problem without comments. If you don't tell me what problem your having, I can't help.
Experience Have done word problems as a tutor and as a student of mathematics and physics for years.
Organizations Sigma Xi
Education/Credentials Optical Science PhD
Past/Present Clients I've answered hundreds of questions here at AllExperts.com in algebra, physics and general math sections.
Thanks for making yourself available this way. I have a relatively simple story problem, but my math skills are terrible.
I'm trying to figure out how long it would take our fastest jet to travel across a fixed distance in space. We don't have interstellar rockets yet, so I'm using the world's fastest plane, the SR-71, as a point of reference.
It's one column of the Eagle Nebula in deep space that I am trying to determine the flight time across.
One column of the nebula is 15 lightyears wide. A lightyear is approx. 6 billion miles. The SR-71 flies at approx. 2,000 miles per hour. How many years would it take that plane traveling 2,000 MPH to cross 90 billion miles?
I think this is 90 billion miles divided by 2,000 (45 million), then dividing 45 million by the number of hours in a year (8,765). I'm getting 5,134 years to cross the nebula.
Am I close?
Answer A lightyear is much more than you have approximated. It is more like 6 trillion miles.
So the width (I haven't checked the size of the nebula) is more like 90 trillion miles and thus the hours it would take is 45 billion. After doing the math, I get a similar number as yours except of course those 3 missing zeroes so my answer is approximately 5 million years. Not terribly feasible huh. Well, since we still can't even get there, much less cross it, I guess we'll just have to keep working on warp drives. :)
