My name is Ali i am in the 7th grade and my teacher asked us a problem ans i don't know how to go about solving it. here it is:

If you take a rope and wrap it around the equator and then overlap it 6ft. and cut off the extra then you loosen it up so the ends meet how far would it stand off the ground?

I really dont know how to go about solving this i figured out that the earth is 131480184 ft around the equator but i dont know where to go from there

Hi Ali,

you didn't say how you arrived at 131480184 ft around the equator. I assume that you know the diameter or radius of the earth and you used the fact that, for a circle,

circumference = pi diameter or the equivalent expression circumference = 2 pi radius I'm going to use the second expression.

The rope is 6 feet longer than the circumference of the earth, so the rope is 131480190 ft long. Form this rope into a circle. Hence you have a circle with a circumference of 131480190 ft. What is the radius of this circle?

circumference = 2 pi radius

so 131480190 = 2 pi radius Divide both sides by 2 pi to find the radius. How does that number compare to the radius of the earth?

Go to Math Central