Suppose that, while lying on a beach near the equator watching the Sun set over a calm ocean, you start a stopwatch just as the top of the Sun disappears. You then stand, elevating your eyes by a height H = 1.70 m, and stop the watch when the top of the Sun again disappears. If the elapsed time is t = 11.1 s, what is the radius r of Earth?

Until 1883, every city and town in the United States kept its own local time. Today, travelers reset their watches only when the time change equals 1.0 h. How far, on the average, must you travel in degrees of longitude between the time-zone boundaries at which your watch must be reset by 1.0 h? (Hint: Earth rotates \(360^{\circ}\) in about 24 h.)

For about 10 years after the French Revolution, the French government attempted to base measures of time on multiples of ten: One week consisted of 10 days, one day consisted of 10 hours, one hour consisted of 100 minutes, and one minute consisted of 100 seconds. What are the ratios of (a) the French decimal week to the standard week and (b) the French decimal second to the standard second?

The fastest growing plant on record is a Hesperoyucca whipplei that grew 3.7 m in 14 days. What was its growth rate in micrometers per second?

Three digital clocks A, B, and C run at different rates and do not have simultaneous readings of zero. Figure 1.3 shows simultaneous readings on pairs of the clocks for four occasions. (At the earliest occasion, for example, B reads 25.0 s and C reads 92.0 s.) If two events are 600 s apart on clock A, how far apart are they on (a) clock B and (b) clock C? (c) When clock A reads 400 s, what does clock B read? (d) When clock C reads 15.0 s, what does clock B read? (Assume negative readings for prezero times.)

A lecture period (50 min) is close to 1 microcentury. (a) How long is a microcentury in minutes? (b) Using \(\text { percentage difference }=\left(\frac{\text { actual }-\text { approximation }}{\text { actual }}\right) 100 \text {, }\) find the percentage difference from the approximation.

A fortnight is a charming English measure of time equal to 2.0 weeks (the word is a contraction of “fourteen nights”). That is a nice amount of time in pleasant company but perhaps a painful string of microseconds in unpleasant company. How many microseconds are in a fortnight?

Time standards are now based on atomic clocks. A promising second standard is based on pulsars, which are rotating neutron stars (highly compact stars consisting only of neutrons). Some rotate at a rate that is highly stable, sending out a radio beacon that sweeps briefly across Earth once with each rotation, like a lighthouse beacon. Pulsar PSR 1937 + 21 is an example; it rotates once every \(1.557 806 448 872 75 \pm 3 \ \mathrm{ms}\), where the trailing \(\pm 3\) indicates the uncertainty in the last decimal place (it does not mean \(\pm 3 \ \mathrm{ms}\) ). (a) How many rotations does PSR 1937 + 21 make in 7.00 days? (b) How much time does the pulsar take to rotate exactly one million times and (c) what is the associated uncertainty?

Five clocks are being tested in a laboratory. Exactly at noon, as determined by the WWV time signal, on successive days of a week the clocks read as in the following table. Rank the five clocks according to their relative value as good timekeepers, best to worst. Justify your choice.

Because Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing, the length of each day increases: The day at the end of 1.0 century is 1.0 ms longer than the day at the start of the century. In 20 centuries, what is the total of the daily increases in time?

Suppose that, while lying on a beach near the equator watching the Sun set over a calm ocean, you start a stopwatch just as the top of the Sun disappears. You then stand, elevating your eyes by a height H = 1.70 m, and stop the watch when the top of the Sun again disappears. If the elapsed time is t = 11.1 s, what is the radius r of Earth?