From a practice exercise in Building Skills In Python page 64 I'm working on How Much Does The Atmosphere Weigh? Part 1: To check it states that the answer should be app. 10**18kg However, and I've checked to make sure that the math I've layed out matches up with the texts, I get 5.07360705863e+20
In the code I have broken the order of operations down to more parenthetical, and tried outright, but see nothing obvious about how it's strung together. If anyone has had a similar experience with the problem given, or see anything blatantly obvious I've done wrong with the ordering of operations. I tried to include as much of the problem(formulas are just above variables they're used in) as comments as possible. import math def atmosphereWeight(): pi = math.pi """Air Pressure (at sea level) P0. This is the long-term average. P0 = 1.01325 × 10**5""" airPressCLevl = 1.01325*(10**5) gravity = 9.82 """We can use g to get the kg of mass from the force of air pressure P0. Apply the acceleration of gravity (in m/sec2) to the air pressure (in kg · m/sec2). This result is mass of the atmosphere in kilograms per square meter (kg/m2). Mm2 = P0 × g""" masAtmoInKgPerSqM = airPressCLevl * gravity """Given the mass of air per square meter, we need to know how many square meters of surface to apply this mass to. Radius of Earth R in meters, m. This is an average radius; our planet isn’t a perfect sphere. R = 6.37 × 10""" avgRadiusEarth = 6.37 * (10**6) """The area of a Sphere. A = 4πr2""" areaSphere = 4 * pi * (avgRadiusEarth**2) """Mass of atmosphere (in Kg) is the weight per square meter, times the number of square meters Ma = P0 × g × A""" masEarthAtmoInKgPerSqM = airPressCLevl * gravity * areaSphere print(masEarthAtmoInKgPerSqM) atmosphereWeight() TIA, David _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor