Highlights
1. Estimation Problem
Estimate how much water passes out of the Saginaw river into the Saginaw bay every day.
Try to use information you know to connect to the information you don’t know to get to an estimate of the quantity. What level of precision do you think you can get to with your estimates? Order of magnitude? The factor of 2? Why/how do you know?
4. 1-D Motion with Constant Acceleration
You’re driving in your car down the highway at a constant speed when suddenly the jerk in front of you er...I mean a second car in front of you, which was driving at the same initial speed hits the brakes. It turns out there was a traffic jam ahead. The goal of the problem is to figure out how far behind that second car the first car has to have been driving in order to avoid an accident.
a) To begin with, choose reasonable highway speeds, but in SI-units for your two cars.
b) Let’s assume you’ve got pretty typical reaction time. Estimate or look up how long it would probably take for you to see the brake lights go on and then move your foot to the brake pedal (hint: getting this right to an order of magnitude is probably good enough).
c) The car in front of you stops in a hurry, but doesn’t slam on the brakes. Estimate their acceleration. Hint: think about how long it would take you to slow down from highway speeds if you stop normally, brake hard, or slam on the brakes and work from that knowledge.
d) You don’t panic, and (hopefully) have left enough space to avoid hitting the car, but you also apply the brakes strongly, and brake at the same rate as the car in front of you. How much space do you need to leave to avoid hitting the other car? Hint: If you think carefully, this is a very simple calculation.
e) What if your brakes are not as good and you can only stop at 90% of the other car’s acceleration? How much space is needed then? Hint: Compare the stopping distances for the two cars.
5. 1-D Motion with Non-Constant Acceleration
In physics problems we often assume objects just accelerate at constant rates, because it is easy. However, it isn’t very realistic to assume a car simply starts from rest with constant acceleration. Let’s try a more realistic model of acceleration. A car starts from rest and the driver presses on the gas and the car’s acceleration increases at a constant rate for about 2.5 seconds until it reaches about 3.7 m/s2, at which point it levels off and stays constant for another 3 seconds. At this point the driver pulls back off a little bit on the gas and the car moves at constant velocity.
a) Sketch qualitative, but correct graphs for acceleration vs. time, velocity vs. time and position vs. time for the car.
b) How fast is the car going at the when the driver pulls back on the gas? Answer in m/s and miles/hour.
c) Compare with your own experiences driving, and/or do a little Internet research. Does this velocity seem reasonable? Excessively fast? Excessively slow? Cite anything you look up.
d) How about the acceleration? Is this reasonable? Again cite anything you look up.
8. Uniform Circular Motion
Lookup any astronomical information you need (Cite your sources) to answer the following questions :
a) What is the speed of a person standing on the equator as a result of the Earth’s rotational motion? What is the magnitude of the centripetal acceleration of the person as a result of this motion (you may neglect the Earth’s axial tilt)?
b) What is the speed of a person standing on the surface of the Earth as a result of the Earth’s orbital motion? What is the magnitude of the cen- tripetal acceleration of the person as a result of this motion?
c) What is the centripetal acceleration of a point at the center of the moon due to its orbit around the Earth?
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