At the instant a traffic light turns green, a car starts moving with a constant acceleration a of 3.25 m/s2. At the same instant a truck, traveling with a constant speed of 11.00 m/s, overtakes and passes the car. How far beyond the traffic light will the car overtake the truck?


What will be the speed of the car at that instant?



I cannot figure these out for the life of me, hope someone can help me!

for the truck:

s_t = v_tt

for the car:

s_c = 0.5a_ct^2

at the point they overtake, s_c = s_t:

v_tt = 0.5a_ct^2

Now you can solve this for t. Then use s = vt for the truck to find s.

Then, for the second part you can use your suvat equations with the information that you have already worked out.

yes I somewhat understand but could you do me a favor and tell me what your variables mean because I have different variables in my book and they mean different things, also in this problem you said to use vi(t) for the truck, we do not know the "t" in the problem, what is the time that I should plug in for both equations??

You're trying to calculate time, from which you can calculate distance.