 | |
| Browse | Ask | Answer | Search | Join/Login | |
Physics Car Equation, No Idea How to Even Start Figuring Out the Problem
Asked Dec 19, 2011, 05:25 PM
—
1 Answer You are riding in a car (moving at a constant velocity) and see an open manhole in the road ahead. You take a cantaloupe out of the grocery bag and hold it out the window of the car. Doing a quick calculation you know how far (in meters) ahead of the hole you have to drop the cantaloupe for it to land in the open hole without bouncing on the road. Choose your own speed of the car (between 10 m/s and 20 m/s) and initial height of the cantaloupe (between 1.0 m and 2.0 m) and show the calculations you used and the resulting lead distance for successfully dropping the fruit. I'm not asking any one to do it for me I'm asking for help on how to do it because I have no idea how to. |
| ||||
| What you basically need to understand is that the cantaloupe will follow a parabolic motion as it is falling. There is the initial horizontal velocity, that of the car, and a vertical acceleration downwards, that of gravity. The distance traveled vertically is given by the kinematics equation: The distance travelled horizontally is given by the kinematics equation: As you can see, they appear to be the exact same, except that the initial speeds and accelerations are different. Indeed, along the horizontal, you only have a constant initial speed uh and no acceleration so that the equation effectively becomes: And along the vertical, there is no initial speed since the fruit is released and not thrown. So it effectively becomes: Now, you just need to try in some values for sv and uh to get a value for t which would work in both equations. | ||||
| |
| Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Add your answer here.
Check out some similar questions!
A ball is thrown straight upward and rises to a maximum height of 18.0 m above its launch point. At what height above its launch point has the speed of the ball decreased to one-half of its initial value?
A physics teacher shoots a .30 caliber rifle at a 0.47 kg block of wood. The rifle and wood are mounted on separate carts that sit atop an air track (like a linear air hockey table--ie. Frictionless). The 5.7 kg rifle fires a 27 gram bullet at 227 m/s in the positive direction. What would be the...
0.1kg of ice initially at a temperature of -10 degrees Celsius is added to a cup with .5kg of water initially at 20 degrees Celsius. The water and ice are isolated thermally from their surroundings. The specific heat of ice is 2000 J/kgoC, the specific heat of water is 4186 J/kgoC and the latent...
A cab driver picks up a customer and delivers her 3.50 km away, driving a straight route. The driver accelerates to the speed limit and, upon reacing it, begins to decelerate immediately. The magnitude of the deceleration two times the magnitude of the acceleration. Find the lengths of the...
You observe an arti cial satellite orbiting the earth. You estimates it is at An altitude h = km above the earth's surface and has a mass M = 3500 kg. You wish to calculate when the satellite will be back in the same position. From the second law of motion and the gravitational force law,...
View more Physics questions Search
