Question

Rubber Ducks A severe storm on January 10, 1992, caused a cargo ship near the Aleutian Islands to spill 29,000 rubber ducks and other bath toys into the ocean. Ten months later hundreds of rubber ducks began to appear along the shoreline near Sitka, Alaska, roughly 1600 miles away.

What was the approximate average speed of the ocean current that carried the ducks to shore in m/s and in mi/h? (Rubber ducks from the same spill began to appear on the coast of Maine in July 2003.)

(a) m/s

(b) mi/h?

Answer 1

So we need to find the speed of something that travels roughly 1600 miles in 10 months.

Let's firstly convert 1600 miles into metres.

1 mile = 1609 metres,

so 1600 miles = 1609 x 1600

= 2574400 metres.

As we are only using approximate calculations, let's take a month to be 30 days.

Then 10 months is 300 days.

And the number of hours in this period is 300 x 24 = 7200.

Average speed is distance divided by time = (2574400 m)/(7200 hours)

= 358 metres/hour. Since this is only approximate, let's round to 360 metres/hour. As there are 3600 seconds in an hour, the distance travelled by the ducks in 1 second is approximately 360/3600 = 0.1 m/s.

Now conerting again to mi/h

1m/s=2.2369mi/h

So,

0.1m/s= 0.1*2.2369

=0.22369mi/h