Question

How many inches are between the earth and the moon?

Answer 1

Hint: As a first step, you could just give a rough idea of how close is the moon from earth in comparison to other astronomical bodies. Then you could recall the value in some commonly used units. After which you may have to recall the conversion between that unit into inches as per the requirement of the question.

Complete answer:
In the question, we are asked to find the distance between the Earth and the Moon in inches. We all know that the moon is the closest neighbor in space and here we have to find how close the moon is. Commonly the average distance between the moon and the earth is given in miles. The value is found to be 238855 miles away. Now that we know the distance in miles, we could find the conversion of miles to inches. So the conversation says that 5280 feet makes a total of 1 mile. So we see that,
$1mile\to 5280feet$
But we know that 12 inches makes a one foot, that is,
$1mile\to 5280\times 12inches$
$\Rightarrow 1mile\to 63360inches$
$\Rightarrow 238855miles\to 238855\times 63360inches$
$\therefore 238855miles\to 15133852800inches$
Therefore, we found that the distance between the Earth and the moon is 15133852800inches, that is,
$1.51\times {{10}^{10}}inches$.
Also, we should remember that this is an average value because the orbit of the moon is no perfect circle around the Earth.

Note:
This distance between the Earth and the moon could be given in various other units of length other than the ones given in the solution. The value is found to be 384400km in kilometers and in terms of earth length, the value is found to be 30 earths. At the farthest point the distance is found to be 32 earths and at the nearest point it is 28-29 earths.