In: Physics
On a cloudless day, the sunlight that reaches the surface of the Earth has an intensity of about 1.01×103 W/m2. What is the electromagnetic energy contained in 4.3 m3 of space just above the Earth's surface?
c = 3.00×108 m/s
Given the intensity of sunlight at the surface of the Earth is
1010 Watts of energy is transferred to a surface area of 1m2.
Using 1Watts=1Joule per second
1010 Joules of energy is transferred to a surface area of 1m2 every second.
Consider a cuboid of sides l, b, and h and volume V=lbh=4.3m3. Sunlight is incident of the ABCD as shown in the above figure. Power entering the cuboid through surface ABCD is
where A=hb is the area of the surface ABCD
We want calculate the total energy that entered through the surface ABCD, when the light completely fills the cuboid. Let t be the time in which the light completely fills cuboid, that is, the time in which it traveled from surface ABCD to surface EFGH.
We know that light travel at speed , time taken by the light to cover distance is
Total energy entered surface ABCD in time t is
hbl is the volume of the cuboid.
Substituting values