How many football fields stretched end to end would it take to reach from earth to the sun?

Question

The average distance between Earth and the sun is 164,000,000,000 yards.

Write the distance in scientific notation.

 

The length of a football field including end zones is 1.20 x 10² yards. How many football fields stretched end to end would it take to reach from earth to the sun?

Answer 1

• 164,000,000,000 in scientific notation is 1.64 x 10¹¹ (we needed to move the decimal 11 places to the left)
• To figure out how many football fields we need, we simply divide 1.64x10¹¹ by 1.20x10²
• To divide, we can do the numerical part 1.64/1.2 separately for 1.37 (rounded), and also divide the 10¹¹/10² separately for 10⁹ (we get the 9 from 11-2).
• So your answer is 1.37x10⁹, or 1,370,000,000