Source: "Goofy" - Wikipedia
For years, I've pondered a question presented by Goofy in the film "A Goofy Movie" [IMDB]:
"How many cups of sugar does it take to get to the Moon?"Having just watching the film with my kids tonight, I decided to finally calculate the answer.
Disregarding the effects of atmospheric drag and the gravity of the Sun, I can focus solely on the physics involving the gravity of the Earth and Moon ["Escape velocity" - Wikipedia]:
- A "cup of sugar" has the potential to release 3.18 MJ of energyUsing an understanding of (simplified) rocket science [minutephysics - YouTube], we can learn the basic equation needed to calculate how much energy is needed to travel to the Moon:
- The velocity required to break free of Earth (VeE) is 11.2 km/s
- The velocity gained by an object falling to the Moon (VeM) is 2.4 km/s
- My mass (Mi) is approximately 77 kg 1
Energy in Joules = (.5*Mi)*((VeE)²-(VeM)²)Now we know that I, as some sort of bizarre human-rocket, would need 4610 MJ of energy to travel to the Moon. We already found that 3.18 MJ of energy is in each cup of sugar.
(38.5)*(11.2²-2.4²) = 4.61x109 J = 4610 MJ
4610 MJ / 3.18 MJ = 1450This means that it would require the energy of 1450 cups of sugar for me to travel to the Moon. Don't worry, the hard part will be figuring out how I can fly.
1 As a point of reference, the Saturn V rocket which launched Apollo 11 was 3,039,000 kg [Saturn V - Wikipedia].
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