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clairez93
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Homework Statement
The Apollo 11 astronauts set up a highly reflecting panel on the Moon's surface. The speed of light can be found by measuring the time it takes a laser beam to travel from Earth, reflect from the retroreflector, and return to Earth. If this interval is measured to be 2.51 s, what is the measured speed of light? Take the center-to-center distance from the Earth to the Moon to be 3.84 x 10^8 m and do not neglect the sizes of the Earth and the Moon.
Homework Equations
none given in the section
The Attempt at a Solution
I tried to simply to divide 3.84 x 10^8 m by 2.51, which got me the ansewr of 152988047.8 The book's answer is 299.5 Mm/s. I'm thinking my mistake is that I didn't do anything with the sizes of the Earth and the Moon, but I'm not sure how to incorporate those into this problem.