Sunlight passing through a pinhole in a piece of paper casts an image of the Sun, as shown. The image size depends on the distance from the pinhole to the floor. If the paper with the pinhole is held about 100 cm above the floor, the diameter of the solar image is about 1 cm. A 1-cm-diameter coin will just fit over the image (making it easy to measure!). That means about 100 end-to-end coins would fit between the floor and the pinhole. What does this tell you about how many Suns would fit between Earth and the Sun?

Transcribed Image Text:

Sun (exaggerated scale) pinhole 100 coin diameters solar image = 1 coin diameter