How fast does sunrise in miles per hour appear to move at 40°North?
Maybe I’m wrong here, but the sunrise has to travel 360 degrees in 24 hours, so 15 degrees per hour. At 40 degrees latitude, one degree of longitude is about 53 miles, so (15x53) it would appear to travel at 795 miles per hour.
Pasta
August 27, 2010, 11:43pm
3
I concur. Typed this into Google:
*2pi (radius of earth)cos(40 degrees)/(24 hours) in mph
and got 795 mph.
GreasyJack:
Maybe I’m wrong here, but the sunrise has to travel 360 degrees in 24 hours, so 15 degrees per hour. At 40 degrees latitude, one degree of longitude is about 53 miles, so (15x53) it would appear to travel at 795 miles per hour.
If you want to get really pedantic, you need to allow for the “fattening” of the Earth towards the equator:
In geography, latitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the north-south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from −90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pole, with 0° at the Equator. Lines of constant latitude, or parallels, run east-west as circles parallel to the equator. Latitude and longitude are used together as a coordinate pair to specify a location on the surface of the Earth.
On its own, the ter...
LSLGuy
August 28, 2010, 3:29pm
5
I gotta say, the 21st Century sure is awesome.