Question

How much distance would Archimedes have to travel if he had to lift the Earth by 1 cm by a sufficiently large lever? Assume that the mass of the earth is 6 x 10^24 Kg and Archimedes can only lift 60 Kg.

Answer 1

Answer:

The mass of Earth is 6×1024kg

. If Archimedes can lift 60 kg, he would need a lever with an arm ratio of 1023:1

. So if the short arm is one meter long, the lever length will be 1023

meters plus one. Also, note that he would have to push the lever for 1020

meters to shift the Earth just by one millimeter.