A clunker has an acceleration, a, and a deceleration of (-1.84)a. The clunker must travel a short distance, L, in the minimum time. Starting and ending at rest, at what portion of L should the driver start braking?

Question

anonymous · Answer

hmm good question.. any leads you got so far?

anonymous · Answer

Well i thought of it this way |dw:1363373418916:dw|

lets say it accelerates till x and for time t
and brakes after that for the rest of the time (T -t).. 

now we need to find the relationship between t and T.. which will tell at what fraction of the time T should we start breaking

next we can minimize T by differentiating and equating it to zero