Question

Two motorcycles are traveling due east with different velocities. However, four seconds later, they have the same velocity. During this interval, cycle A has an average acceleration of 2.0 m/s^2 due east, while cycle B has an average acceleration of 4.0 m/s^2 due east. By how much did the speeds differ at the beginning of the four-second interval?

Answer 1

8 m/s. They have a difference of 2m/s^2 acceleration. So every second backwards, Bike B was traveling 2m/s slower than Bike A. So 4 seconds ago, Bike B was moving 8 m/s slower than Bike A.

Bike A was moving faster.

An interesting side note - the problem doesn't state anything about the positions of the bikes, so even though after 4 seconds they are traveling the same VELOCITY, they could be miles apart. I would have liked to see a bonus question like, "Which bike will be in the lead after 4 more seconds?" or something like that to try to trick you. The answer would be, "Not enough information to know".

Resources: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070829203434AAbimhw#

Answer 2

What He said XD

Answer 3

^