Velocity and Acceleration: airliner; sports car

[martinferguson]

How do I work this problem?

1) An airliner has an airborne velocity of 232 m/s. What is the plane's average acceleration if it takes the plan 15 minutes to reach its airborne velocity?

2) A sports car is advertised as being able to go from 0 to 60 seconds in 6.00 seconds. If 60 mi/h is equal to 27 m/s, what is the sports car's average acceleration?

 

[Count Iblis]

Re: Velocity and Acceleration

How do I work this problem?

An airliner has an airborne velocity of 232 m/s. What is the plane's average acceleration if it takes the plan 15 minutes to reach its airborne velocity?



A sports car is advertised as being able to go from 0 to 60 seconds in 6.00 seconds. If 60 mi/h is equal to 27 m/s, what is the sports car's average acceleration?

(232 m/s)/(15 minutes) = ...

(60 miles/hour)/(6 seconds) = ...

 

[Steem]

On the second problem make sure you use the 27m/s because it matches with the units of time.

 

[martinferguson]

I think that's where I have the problem -- on the time conversions. Using your suggestions:

Problem 1: 232 m/s / 15= 15.47 . . . Is that the answer? 15.47 m/s?

Problem 2: 27 m/s / 6 = 4.5 m/s?

 

[Steem]

I'm sorry I overlooked the first problem. You also need to convert 15min to seconds by multiplying it by 60sec/min.

 

[Count Iblis]

I think that's where I have the problem -- on the time conversions. Using your suggestions:

Problem 1: 232 m/s / 15= 15.47 . . . Is that the answer? 15.47 m/s?

Problem 2: 27 m/s / 6 = 4.5 m/s?

In problem 1 you must divide by 15 minutes, not 15, in problem 2 by 6 seconds not by 6. Don't worry about unit conversions, the equation will do it for you. E.g.:

232 (meters /second) / (15 minutes) = 232/15 meters/(second minute)

The answer, as it stands is perfectly correct. But we can substitute in here:

minute = 60 seconds. If you do that you get:

232/15 meters/(second minute) = 232/15 meters/(second 60 second) =

232/(15*60) meters/second^2 = 0.2578 meters/second^2

meters/second^2 is the SI unit in which we usually express accelerations.