PHY218 UNIVERSITY PHYSICS FALL 2016

RECITATION PROBLEMS

MOTION ALONG A STRAIGHT LINE

1. Walk Around the Lake: It's a sunny Sunday afternoon, about 65 F, and you are walking around Lake
Calhoun enjoying the last of the autumn color. The sidewalk is crowded with runners and walkers. You
notice a runner approaching you wearing a tee-shirt with writing on it. You read the first two lines, but
are unable to read the third and final line before he passes. You wonder, "Hmm, if he continues around
the lake, I bet I'll see him again, but I should anticipate the time when we'll pass again." You look at your
watch and it is 3:07 p.m. You recall the lake is 3.4 miles in circumference. You estimate your walking speed
at 3 miles per hour and the runner's speed to be about 7 miles per hour.
2. Solar Car Race: You have joined the University team racing a solar powered car. The optimal average
speed for the car depends on the amount of sun hitting its solar panels. Your job is to determine strategy
by programming a computer to calculate the car's average speed for a day consisting of different race
conditions. To do this you need to determine the equation for the day's average speed based on the car's
average speed for each part of the trip. As practice you imagine that the day's race consists of some
distance under bright sun, the same distance with partly cloudy conditions, and twice that distance under
cloudy conditions.
3. Adventure Movie: You have landed a summer job as the technical assistant to the director of an
adventure movie shot here in Minnesota. The script calls for a large package to be dropped onto the bed
of a fast moving pick-up truck from a helicopter that is hovering above the road, out of view of the camera.
The helicopter is 235 feet above the road, and the bed of the truck is 3 feet above the road. The truck is
traveling down the road at 40 miles/hour. You must determine when to cue the assistant in the helicopter
to drop the package so it lands in the truck. The director is paying $20,000 per hour for the chopper, so
he wants you to do this successfully in one take.
4. Science Fiction Movie: Because parents are concerned that children are learning "wrong" science
from TV, you have been asked to be a technical advisor for a scene in a new science fiction movie. The
scene takes place on a space station at rest in deep space far away from any stars. In the plot, a vicious
criminal (Alicia Badax) escapes from the space station prison. Alicia steals a small space ship and blasts off
to meet her partners somewhere in deep space. If she is to just barely escape, how long do her partners
have to transport her off her ship before she is destroyed by a photon torpedo from the space station? In
the story, the stolen ship accelerates in a straight line at its maximum possible acceleration of 30 m/sec2.
After 10 minutes all of the fuel is burned and the ship coasts at a constant velocity. Meanwhile, the hero
of this episode (Major Starr) learns of the escape while dining with the station's commander. Of course
he immediately rushes off to fire photon torpedoes at Alicia. Once fired, a photon torpedo travels at a
constant velocity of 20,000 m/s. By that time Alicia has a 30 minute head start on the photon torpedo.
5. Train Wreck: Because of your knowledge of physics, you have been assigned to investigate a train
wreck between a fast moving passenger train and a slower moving freight train both going in the same
direction. You have statements from the engineer of each train and the stationmaster as well as some
measurements which you make. To check the consistency of each person's description of the events
leading up to the collision, you decide to calculate the distance from the station that the collision should
have occurred if everyone were telling what really happened and compare that with the actual position
of the wreck which is 0.5 miles from the station. In this calculation you decide that you can ignore all
reaction times. Here is what you know:

PHY218 UNIVERSITY PHYSICS FALL 2016

RECITATION PROBLEMS

The stationmaster claims that she noted that the freight train was behind schedule. As regulations
require, she switched on a warning light just as the last car of the freight train passed her.
The freight train engineer says he was going at a constant speed of 10 miles per hour.
The passenger train engineer says she was going at the speed limit of 40 miles per hour when she
approached the warning light. Just as she reached the warning light she saw it go on and
immediately hit the brakes.
The warning light is located so that a train gets to it 2.0 miles before it gets to the station.
The passenger train slows down at a constant rate of 1.0 mile per hour for each minute as soon
as you hit the brakes.

6. Catching the Bus: A student is running at her top speed of 5.0 m/s to catch a bus, which is stopped at
the bus stop. When the student is still 40.0 m from the bus, it starts to pull away, moving with a constant
acceleration of 0.170 m/s2. (a) For how much time and what distance does the student have to run at 5.0
m/s before she overtakes the bus? (b) When she reaches the bus, how fast is the bus traveling? (c) Sketch
an x-t graph for both the student and the bus. Take x = 0 at the initial position of the student. (d) The
equations you used in part (a) to find the time have a second solution, corresponding to a later time for
which the student and bus are again at the same place if they continue their specified motions. Explain
the significance of this second solution. How fast is the bus traveling at this point? (e) If the students top
speed is 3.5 m/s, will she catch the bus? (f) What is the minimum speed the student must have to just
catch up with the bus? For what time and what distance does she have to run in that case?
7. Balls Off the Roof: A ball is thrown straight up from the edge of the roof of a building. A second ball
is dropped from the roof 1.00 s later. Ignore air resistance. (a) If the height of the building is 20.0 m, what
must the initial speed of the first ball be if both are to hit the ground at the same time? On the same
graph, sketch the positions of both balls as a function of time, measured from when the first ball is thrown.
Consider the same situation, but now let the initial speed vo of the first ball be given and treat the height
h of the building as an unknown. (b) What must the height of the building be for both balls to reach the
ground at the same time if (i) vo is 6.0 m/s and (ii) vo is 9.5 m/s? (c) If vo is greater than some value vmax,
no value of h exists that allows both balls to hit the ground at the same time. Solve for vmax. The value vmax
has a simple physical interpretation. What is it? (d) If vo is less than some value vmin, no value of h exists
that allows both balls to hit the ground at the same time. Solve for vmin. The value vmin also has a simple
physical interpretation. What is it?
8. Variable Acceleration: Consider the motion of a particle that experiences a variable acceleration given
by ax = aox + bt, where aox and b are constants and x = xo and vx = vox at t = 0. (a) Find the instantaneous
velocity as a function of time. (b) Find the position as a function of time. (c) Find the average velocity for
the time interval with an initial time of zero and arbitrary nal time t. (d) Compare the average of the
initial and final velocities to your answer to Part (c). Are these two averages equal? Explain
9. Rocket Backpack: A physics professor, equipped with a rocket backpack, steps out of a helicopter at
an altitude of 575 m with zero initial velocity. (Neglect air resistance.) For 8.0 s, she falls freely. At that
time, she res her rockets and slows her rate of descent at 15 m/s2 until her rate of descent reaches 5.0
m/s. At this point, she adjusts her rocket engine controls to maintain that rate of descent until she reaches
the ground. (a) On a single graph, sketch her acceleration and velocity as functions of time. (Take upward
to be positive) (b) What is her speed at the end of the first 8.0 s? (c) What is the duration of her slowingdown period? (d) How far does she travel while slowing dawn? (e) How much time is required for the
entire trip from the helicopter to the ground? (f) What is her average velocity for the entire trip?
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PHY218 UNIVERSITY PHYSICS FALL 2016

RECITATION PROBLEMS

10. Sonar: A submarine can use sonar (sound traveling through water) to determine its distance from
other objects. The time between the emission of a sound pulse (a "ping) and the detection at its echo
can be used to determine such distances. Alternatively, by measuring the time between successive echo
receptions of a regularly timed set of pings, the submarines speed may be determined by comparing the
time between echoes to the time between pings. Assume you are the sonar operator in a submarine
traveling at a constant velocity underwater. Your boat is in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where the
speed of sound is known to be 1522 m/s. If you send out pings every 2.00 s, and your apparatus receives
echoes reected from an undersea cliff every 1.98 s, how fast is your submarine traveling?
11. Waking the Balrog: In The Fellowship of the Ring, the hobbit Peregrine Took (Pippin for short) drops
a rock into a well while the travelers are in the caves of Moria. This wakes a balrog (a bad thing) and causes
all kinds of trouble. Pippin heard the rock hit the water 7.5 s after he dropped it. (a) Ignoring the time it
took the sound to get back up, how deep is the well? (b) If the speed of sound is 340 m/s (it was pretty
cool in that part of Moria), was it OK to ignore the time it takes sound to get back up? Discuss and support
your answer with a calculation.
12. Tailgating: In this problem we analyze the phenomenon of "tailgating" in a car on a highway at high
speeds. This means traveling too close behind the car ahead of you. Tailgating leads to multiple car crashes
when one of the cars in a line suddenly slows down. The question we want to answer is: "How close is too
close?"
To answer this question, let's suppose you are driving on the highway at a speed of 100 km/h (a bit more
than 60 mi/h). The car ahead of you suddenly puts on its brakes. We need to calculate a number of things:
how long it takes you to respond; how far you travel in that time; how far the other car traveled in that
time.
A) First let's estimate how long it takes you to respond. Two times are involved: how long it takes from
the time you notice something happening till you start to move to the brake, and how long it takes to
move your foot to the brake. You will need a ruler to do this. Take the ruler and have a partner hold it
from the one end hanging straight down. Place your thumb and forefinger opposite the bottom of the
ruler. Have your partner release the ruler suddenly and try to catch it with your thumb and forefinger.
Measure how far it fell before you caught it. Do this three times and take the average distance. Assuming
the ruler was falling freely without air resistance (not a bad assumption), calculate how much time it took
before you caught it, t1. Estimate the time, t2, it takes you to move your foot from the gas pedal to the
brake pedal. Your reaction time is t1 + t2.
B) If you brake hard and fast, you can bring a typical car to rest from 100 km/h (about 60 mi/h) in 5
seconds.
i) Calculate your acceleration, -ao, assuming that it is constant.
ii) Suppose the car ahead of you begins to brake with an acceleration -ao. How far will it travel before
it comes to a stop?
C) Now we can put these results together into a semi-realistic situation. You are driving on the highway
at 100 km/h and there is a car in front of you going at the same speed.
i) You see it start to slow immediately (an unreasonable but simplifying assumption). If you are also
traveling 100 km/h, how far (in meters) do you travel before you begin to brake? If you can also
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PHY218 UNIVERSITY PHYSICS FALL 2016

RECITATION PROBLEMS

produce the acceleration -ao when you brake, what will be the total distance you travel before
you come to a stop?
ii) If you don't notice the car ahead of you beginning to brake for 1 second, how much additional
distance will you travel?
iii) Discuss, on the basis of these calculations, what you think a safe distance is to stay behind a car
at 60 mi/h. Express your distance in "car lengths" (about 15 feet). Would you include a safety
factor beyond what you have calculated here? How much?