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A.) Truck 1=
B.) Truck 2=

You are a traffic accident investigator. You have arrived at the scene of an accident. Two trucks of equal mass(3,000 kg each) were involved in a rear-end accident at a stop sign. here is what you know:
Truck 1 approched the intersection from the top of a 22-meter hill.
Truck 2 was on a flat stretch of road directly in front of truck 1.
At the bottom of the hill, before braking for the stop sign, Truck 1 was going 20 m/s and truck 2 was going 35 m/s.
From the skid marks on the road you can see that truck 1 applied force on its brakes for 2 seconds, 80 meters before the stop sign.
There were no skid marks left by truck 2. The collision occured at the stop sign, where truck 2 had stopped.
After the collision, both trucks were moving together in the same direction at 10 m/s, before slowly rolling to a stop.
You must now push truck 2 using 1,000 N of force, 8 meters off the side of the road so no one else gets hurt.

2007-01-27 14:12:33 · 1 answers · asked by krysdizzle_2006 1 in Science & Mathematics Physics

1 answers

This problem is not possible. Either Truck 1 was going faster than 20 M/S or Truck 2 had not stopped at the stop sign or the collision occurred some distance from the stop sign or it was truck 2 that left the skid marks. The conservation of momentum would not have allowed an object with 3000kg of mass to combine with another object of 3000kg of mass and have the momentum increase.

The story says "The collision occurred at the stop sign, where truck 2 had stopped." This implies that truck 2 had no momentum just before the accident.

The story says "At the bottom of the hill, before braking for the stop sign, Truck 1 was going 20 m/s". The story also says "From the skid marks on the road you can see that truck 1 applied force on its brakes for 2 seconds, 80 meters before the stop sign." Before applying its breaks truck 1 had 20*3000=60,000 kg m/s momentum. After breaking for 2 seconds it would have to have less momentum.

The story says "After the collision, both trucks were moving together in the same direction at 10 m/s" the trucks in combination would then have 10*(3000+3000)=60,000kg m/s of momentum. This implies that there is more momentum after the collision than existed just before the collision.

Momentum is conserved not created!

2007-01-30 13:29:20 · answer #1 · answered by anonimous 6 · 0 0

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