Question

The moon revolves about the Earth in a trajectory that is very nearly a circle of radius r = 384,401 km, and requires 27.3 days (23.4 x 10^5 seconds) to make a complete revolution. What is the acceleration of the moon toward the Earth?

Answer 1

centripetal acceleration = V^2/R

You need to express the moon's velocity V in meters per second when you do the calculation, so that the answer will be in m/s^2. The orbital radius r needs to be in meters.

r = 3.844*10^8 m
V = 2 pi r/(23.4*10^5 s)= 1.032*10^3 m/s

Now finish the calculation

Answer 2

0.0028