Hi all,

Nearly all of the energy used on earth comes originally from the sun, and that solar radiation is intercepted at 1370 Wm^-^2 at the top of the atomsphere, and that 49%of this radiation is absorbed by the earths surface.

If a shallow dish containing ice or warte, placed on the earth surface, absorbs the same the same fraction of solar radiation as the surface itself, at what rate is energy absorbed from the sun by such a container of surface 0.039m^2 ?

 

This is how i worked it out,

 

.49*1370 = watts per square meter absorbed

Multiply that by the dish area. So is the correct answer 67130 Wm^2

 

thanks carl1

well the method is right but the actually number crunching went horribly horribly wrong somewhere.

 

post your complete working so we can find out where.

The units are wrong, and as i_a has implied, the number is wrong by inspection.