A person on the earth is looking up at the sun, which is 92,900,000 miles away. The angle spanned by the sun at the person's eye is approximately 0.5 degrees. What is an estimate for the diameter of the sun?

1 Answer
Phillip E.
Dec 20, 2015

The estimated diameter is 810,705 miles.

Explanation:

As 0.5 degrees is quite a small angle the diameter of the Sun can be calculated as #rθ#, where r is the distance to the Sun and θ is the angle in radians. So the estimated diameters is 92,000,0000.5π/180 = 810,705 miles.

This estimate is not far off as the diameter of the Sun is about 864,938 miles.

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