How Big is the Moon? MM#1

less than 1m read

·Nov 2, 2024

How big is the moon? In the night sky, the moon seems rather small, but in reality, it really isn't. Central Europe would easily fit under it. The surface area of the moon is huge. To give you some perspective, it's as big as the whole European continent, China, the USA, Brazil, and South Africa together.

Weight-wise, the moon is only about 1/81th of the mass of Earth, but how big is it in relation to Earth? Quite big actually, our moon is the biggest in the solar system in relation to its planet, and it's the fifth largest moon in the solar system. Quite a bit bigger than the dwarf planet Pluto.

Now if the moon is really that huge, how far away is it from us to seem this small in the night sky? 370 km, as far as the ISS maybe? No. At that distance, gravitational forces would rip the moon apart. At 36000 km, it would be as far away as our most distant satellite. Let's adjust the distance to reality. Pretty far away, right?

A 747 would need 28 straight days to fly to the moon, and even with our current technology, we'd need two full days. And in a car, a lot of time. So how big is the moon? Well, it kind of depends how you define "big"; but seriously though, it's pretty big.

Hey Youtube, we'll try something new this month, Mo(o)n May. One video about cool moon stuff each Monday in May. So, see you next week! Subtitles by the Amara.org community.

The Physics of Motocross - Smarter Every Day 30

$500 MILLION DOLLARS - Smarter Every Day 179

View All

2015 AP Physics 1 free response 1b

All right, let’s tackle part B now. Derive the magnitude of the acceleration of block 2. Express your answer in terms of m1, m2, and g. And like always, try to pause the video and see if you can work through it yourself. We already worked through part on…

Example visually evaluating discrete functions

What we have here is a visual depiction of a function, and this is a depiction of y is equal to h of x. Now, when a lot of people see function notation like this, they can see it as somewhat intimidating until you realize what it’s saying. All a function …

Make Chris Brown CRY! (Interactive)

[Music] Hey, thank you, thank you, thank you, everybody! Oh, thank you! How’s it going, guys? I apologize that the video quality isn’t better. I’m actually broadcasting from Kansas right now, which is where I grew up. I’ve been celebrating the fourth with…

50 Very Short Rules to Achieve Your Biggest Goals

In this Sunday motivational video, we’re going through 50 very short rules that are mandatory to know if you are to ever going to achieve your biggest goals. Let’s get started: Know what your goals are. Unless you have a clear idea of where you’re going,…

Ruchi Sanghvi on Sweating the Details

So after about a year of working on Cove, it was the best year ever because I learned the most. Cove was acquired by Dropbox. We wanted to build at scale, and Dropbox gave us a bigger stage to do just that. We loved the people, and we loved the product, a…

Inside the Kurdish Ground War on ISIS | Explorer

[Music] I began covering War for National Geographic in 2006, and I never got to Kurdistan during that part of the war. In fact, I really didn’t have any idea who the Kurds were back then. I happened to meet some wounded Kurdish soldiers in Baghdad, and I…

How Big is the Moon? MM#1

More Articles