Determining the rotation of planets about the Sun is important to NASA. Find the angular speed (omega) of Mercury about the Sun in radians per second and degrees per day. (See Table 7.3)
_______ rad/s |
_______ deg/d |
The length of Mercury year is 58.6462 days (58 d 15.5088 h).
The Mercury traverses a rotation of 2 radians every Mercury year. Thus, it will traverse 360 degrees every 58.6462 days.
Degrees per day is just a fraction. Therefore,
360/58.6462 = 6.14 deg/d
Angular speed of Mercury about the Sun = 2/number of days (in seconds) = 2//5067031.68 = 1.24 rad/s
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