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Ch.6 - Electronic Structure of Atoms

Chapter 6, Problem 20d

(d) What distance does electromagnetic radiation travel in 0.38 ps?

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Hey everyone in this example we have an electromagnetic wave that traveled for 54.6 nanoseconds and we need to calculate the distance that this wave traveled. We want to recall that were given units of nanoseconds and one nanosecond is equal to a value of 10 to the negative ninth power seconds. And we're going to be taking the following formula. We're gonna calculate distance represented by D. Here and that's going to be equal to our time traveled in seconds, multiplied by the speed of light, which we should recall is in units of meters per second and will represent time traveled in red and the speed of light and the color purple. So solving for distance, we would say that our time traveled given in the prompt is 54.6 nanoseconds which we're going to convert two seconds. So we set above that for one nanosecond we have 10 to the negative ninth power seconds. And then this is multiplied by our speed of light, which we recall is 3.0. Times 10 to the eighth power meters per second. So so far our units that can cancel out our nanoseconds as well as seconds leaving us with meters as our final unit for distance. And what we're going to get is that our distance is equal to 16.4 m and this would be our final answer as the distance that the electromagnetic wave travels when it traveled for 54.6 nanoseconds. So this is our final answer. And if you have any questions, just leave them down below. Otherwise I'll see everyone in the next practice video.