Question

please help:

a bomb is dropped from an airplane 1,500m above the ground when the plane is moving horizontally at the rate of 160 km/hr.wher should the plane be with respect to the target when the bomb is dropped if a hit is to be made?

Answer 1

if we neglect for air resistance and all the other stuff, except for gravity, that makes it more realistic ... the forward momentum stays constant; so if we do not put in a time constraint, the thing just continues to move forward until something blocks its path.

Gravity is the only thing that i will be concentrating on at the moment, since that is the downward pull that makes it eventually hit the earth in a given time frame.

And since there is no need to reinvent the wheel; lets use a gravity constant that equates to meters: -4.9 t^2 (m/s)

Since the thing is dropped and not pushed, the initial velocity in the downward direction is 0.

-4.9 t^2 +0 t

And we start at an initial height of 1500 meters.

-4.9 t^2 +1500; when we equate this a value of zero; we have hit the ground. It is a position function.

The time it takes to hit the ground is then:

1500 = 4.9 t^2

1500/4.9 = t^2

sqrt(1500/4.9) = t =abt 17.5 seconds.
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convert km/h to m/s

160 km 1000 m 1 hour
------- * -------- * ------ = 2666' 2/3 (m/s)
hour 1 km 60 sec

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2666' 2/3 * 17.5 = horisontal distance the thing will travel till it hits the ground.