A person standing at the top of mountain aconcagua would be approximately 4.3 mi high. the radius of earth is 3959 mi. what is t
he distance to the horizon from this point?
2 answers:
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Answer:
C. Your mass is very small compared to Earth's mass.
Explanation:
Newton's third law of motion states that:
"When an object A exerts a force (action force) on an object B, object B exerts an equal and opposite force (reaction force) on object A".
If we apply this law to the situation described in the problem, we see that:
- The action force is the gravitational force exerted by the Earth on you
- The reaction force is the gravitational force exerted by you on the Earth
And according to the 3rd law, the magnitude of the two forces is equal:
(1)
We also know that, according to Newton's second law of motion, the force on an object is equal to the product between its mass (m) and its acceleration (a):
So we can rewrite (1) as
where
m is the your mass
a is your acceleration
M is the Earth's mass
A is the Earth's acceleration
For the term on the left, we see that m is small, so a is larger (therefore, your acceleration is visible). However, for the term on the right, we see that the mass of the Earth is very large (M is very large), therefore, A is very small, which means that the acceleration of the Earth is almost negligible because the Earth's mass is very large.