A car driving from Tucson to Nogales is distracted by someone throwing a passport into the open window of a bus, veers off the road, and
crashes into a cactus. The driver is luckily wearing his seatbelt, which causes him to decelerate from 110 km/hour to a dead stop in 50 milliseconds.

What is the average acceleration felt by the driver over this period?
How many times greater is this than the acceleration due to Earth’s gravity?
A driver not wearing a seatbelt would fly forward and strike the steering wheel, decelerating much more suddenly –- over, say, 6 ms. What is the acceleration?

Question

A car driving from Tucson to Nogales is distracted by someone throwing a passport into the open window of a bus, veers off the road, and
crashes into a cactus. The driver is luckily wearing his seatbelt, which causes him to decelerate from 110 km/hour to a dead stop in 50 milliseconds.

What is the average acceleration felt by the driver over this period?
How many times greater is this than the acceleration due to Earth’s gravity?
A driver not wearing a seatbelt would fly forward and strike the steering wheel, decelerating much more suddenly –- over, say, 6 ms. What is the acceleration?

zpupster · Answer

convert km/hr to m/s
110000/3600

and 50 ms to .05 s

then plug that into
equation

Vfinal  will be 0


a= (Vf - Vi)/t

zpupster · Answer

remember deceleration is negative

anonymous · Answer

Thank you!