Fermat's principle is of least time rather than of least distance. Would least distance apply for reflection? For refraction? Why are your answers different?

There is a theory that indicates that dinosaurs became extinct when about 65 million years ago, a large asteroid hit the earth surface. dust caused by this collision blocked the sunlight reaching the earth's surface and many forms of life became extinct due to the cold. fearing this threat, how large the radius of an asteroid should you be looking for if the dangerous asteroid size is approximately the same as the one that killed the dinosaurs? available data suggests that about 18% of that asteroid's mass ended up as a dust spread evenly over earth after eventually settling out of the upper atmosphere. about 0.0180 g/cm^2 of dust, which is chemically different than the earth's rock, covered the earth's surface. typical asteroids have a density of about 1.9 g/cm^3. now that we know the size of the asteroid, how much energy was released during impact, assuming all of it was just the kinetic energy of the asteroid right before the impact?

The freezing and boiling point of a substance changes as the air pressure around it changes. for example, at a lower air pressure (higher altitude) it is easier for water molecules to escape from liquid into the air. in a high altitude city such as denver, colorado compared to a sea-level city such as houston, texas, water

The scalar triple product computes the magnitude m of the moment of a force vector f about a specified line. it is m = (r × f) · n, where r is the position vector from the line to the point of application of the force and n is a unit vector in the direction of the line. use matlab to compute the magnitude m for the case where f = [12, −5, 4] n, r = [−3, 5, 2] m, and n = [6, 5, −7].