We humans are traveling around in circles without even knowing it. We travel a circle around the axis of the earth once a day, and an almost-circle around the sun once a year. Considering each trip independently, how fast do we travel in each circle? (Assume we’re on the equator.) Here are some helpful data:
Give each answer in kilometers per hour.
The earth’s circumference is (12,756) km = 40,074 km in 24 hrs.
|40,074 km||= 1670 km/hr (slight rounding).|
This is about 1040 miles/hr at the equator.
In traveling around the sun, we go around a circle (roughly) of radius 149,600,000 km in 365.26 days.
We travel 2(149,600,000) km = 939,964,522 km in 365.26 x 24 hours = 8766.24 hours.
This divides out to 107,191 km/hr or 66,995 mi/hr, nearly 67,000 mi/hr hurtling through space.