FrigginPhysics
Pass the Class and Get On With Your Life
Pass the Class and Get On With Your Life
photo credit: BobMacInnes
A piece of space junk is falling towards Earth. When it has an altitude of 2 x 104, the space junk has a velocity of 425m/s and an angle of 15 degrees below the horizontal. How much time until the space junk impacts the earth (assuming it doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere)?
photo credit: Parksy1964
A ball is thrown upwards. 4 seconds later it returns to it’s initial point of release. What was the initial speed of the ball? The trick to solving this problem:In my post The Physics of Free Falling Bodies I covered “the things your textbook assumes you know about gravity” … well, the only way to solve this physics problem is to know TWO of those assumptions and they are:
1. The time it takes an object to GO UP, will be the same amount of time it takes to COME DOWN.
2. For objects thrown upwards, the velocity at the highest More >
A common thread through almost all applications of physics is the concept of gravity and free falling bodies, which is simply the physical effect that causes objects to fall downward.
Physicists discovered that on earth objects fall towards the earth at a constant acceleration of 9.81 m/s2 or 32.2 ft/s2. This is called the acceleration due to gravity and is typically identified with the symbol “g”. As with lots of things in physics, this is an “idealized” theory … that is, it is not 100% true … there are lots of situations and outside forces that impact the acceleration due to More >
photo credit: Daniel Thompson2
0.3 seconds after bouncing on a trampoline a kid is moving upward at a speed of 5 m/s. To what height above the trampoline does the kid rise before coming back down?
Tips and Tricks for Solving This Physics Problem:
Multipart questions are easy to spot once you know what to look for… and what do you look for?
Missing information!
In this problem there isn’t enough information provided to use the formulas that have the variable “y” for height in them. That is, for instance, we could use the formula Vf2 = V02 = 2ay if only we knew V0.
But…. More >