Question

The average distance from the Earth to the moon is 238,855 miles. If the speed of light is 186,282 miles per second, can you set up an equation representing the time in seconds it takes light to travel from the moon to the Earth? How long does it take? Are you seeing into the past when you look at the moon?

Answer 1

speed = distance / time

They told us the speed of light is 186,282 miles per second
The distance is 238,855 miles

So can you calculate the time?

just replace speed with 186,282 miles per second
and replace distance with 238,855 miles

and then solve for 'time'

Answer 2

Regarding the second part of your question i.e. are you seeing into the past when you look at the moon?

Keep in mind that it takes time for light to travel
so for example, let's take a look at the sun
the light from the sun takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the Earth

actually, an easier example is a flashlight

you have a flashlight and you point it at some far away point
the minute you turn on the flashlight, the light is shooting all the way across to that other place where you have the flashlight focused on

at that moment, you're seeing the light that came out originally when you opened it
and that's because it took some time for the light to travel
(obviously in these short distances with a flashlight, it's very fast but when you consider large distances like how the sun and moon are so far away from us, it takes a lot longer to travel)

so would you say that we're looking into the past when we see the moon?