On a dry road, a car with good tires may be able to brake with a constant deceleration of 5.74 m/s^2. (a) How long does such a car, initially traveling at 29.3 m/s, take to stop? (b) How far does it travel in this time ?

1 Answer
Sep 9, 2015

Time needed to stop: "5.10 s"5.10 s
Distance covered: "74.8 m"74.8 m

Explanation:

This time, you know that at t=0t=0 the car has a speed of "29.3 m/s"29.3 m/s.

At this moment, it starts slowing down with a constant deceleration of "5.74 m/s"""^25.74 m/s2. After covering a distance dd, the car comes to a complete stop.

This means that you can write

underbrace(v^2)_(color(blue)(=0)) = v_0^2 - 2 * a * d

The negative sign is there to show that the acceleration is oriented in the opposite direction to the direction of movement, which is what you would expect for a car that's slowing down.

So, you have

d = v_0^2/(2 * a) = (29.3""^2"m"^color(red)(cancel(color(black)(2)))/color(red)(cancel(color(black)("s"^2))))/(2 * 5.74color(red)(cancel(color(black)("m")))/color(red)(cancel(color(black)("s"^2)))) = color(green)("74.8 m")

The time needed for the car to come to a complete stop is

underbrace(v)_(color(blue)(=0)) = v_0 - a * t

t = v_0/a = (29.3color(red)(cancel(color(black)("m")))/color(red)(cancel(color(black)("s"))))/(5.74color(red)(cancel(color(black)("m")))/"s"^color(red)(cancel(color(black)(2)))) = color(green)("5.10 m/s")