a skydiver is traveling at 180 mph when he pulls the ripcord on his chute. the chute fully deploys in 1.5 seconds, slowing to 60 mph (under normal conditionds), and then develops 1.5 g's of deceleration until it reaches equilibrum at 12 feet per second. what is minimum distance from the ground that the skydoiver can deploy his chute and still (potentially) land safely? at 180 mph what is the margin of error (in seconds), that the skydiver has assuming his reaction time is 0.4 second? (justify your answer)

Question

mrdoe · Answer

ok, so the question gives you extra info just to be confusing, but start by converting all your units of velocity to either mph or ft/s so that it is consistent.  Then what you are interested in is the time it takes for the skydiver to go from 60 mph to 12 ft/s (8.182 mph).  Since you know the initial and final velocities, just plug in.

Once you find the time that takes, just add up that plus the 1.5 seconds for the parachute to deploy, and the 0.4 seconds reaction time.