Question

Jocelyn needs to study two stars for her astronomy research. she has narrowed her choices down to four stars that are located on a straight line from earth. jocelyn wants to study the two stars that are closest to each other. (
a. which two stars should she study? * star distance from earth star a 0.176x10^18 star b 22.13x10^16 star c 31.42x10^14 star d 125.5x10^15

Answer 1

The way to solve this is by putting each distance in terms of the same exponent, let that be 10¹⁵
The first becomes 176 × 10¹⁵
The second becomes 221.3 × 10¹⁵
The third becomes 3.1452 × 10¹⁵
The fourth remains 125.5 × 10¹⁵
It is now visible that the third and fourth stars are closest to the Earth and those should be the ones chosen for study.