A fisherman sets out upstream on a river. His small boat powered by an outboard motor travels at a constant speed v in still water. the water flows at lower constant speed v_w. the fisherman as traveled upstream for 2.04 km when his ice chest falls out of the boat. he notices that the chest is missing only after he hasgone upstream for another 14.4 minutes. at that point, he turns around and heads back downstream, all the time traveling at the same seed relative o the water. he catches up with the floating ice chet just as he returns to his starting point. how fast is the river flowing? solve

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anonymous · Answer

cont'd: this problem in 2 ways. a) first use the earth as reference frame. with respect to the earth, the boat travels upstrem speed v-v_w and downstream at v+v_w b) a second simpler and more elegant solution is obtained by using the water as the refernce frame. this approach has important applications in many more complicated problems such as calculating the motion of rockets and satellites and analyzing the scattering of subatomic particles from massive targets.