Question

an object falls from a flying plane flying horizontally at an altitude of 10000 ft at 50mi/h . how long will it take to hit the ground?

Answer 1

remember that no matter how fast you're going (unless you're going fast enough to orbit or achieve escape velocity) in the horizontal direction, you'll fall vertically at the same speed. like the classic physics teacher example is the shooting the rifle bullet and dropping another bullet with the same mass and size will both hit the ground at the same time. so knowing that you should realize that the kinematic equations can be easily be used to solve this problem. I mean you have the height it's dropped and you know planes only fly on one planet in the solar system and you know that the acceleration due to gravity on earth is 9.8 m/s/s or since your distance is in feet you would use 32.2 ft/s/s. use this; \[d=v_0t+\frac{ 1 }{ 2 }at\] since the object just fell from the plane we can assume it's initial velocity is 0 so get rid of that and whatever else is multiplied by it. just rearrange for what you want.

Answer 2

\[d=v_0t+\frac{1}{2}at^2\] sorry but the initial equation i put up is wrong. here it is corrected. use this one to find your answer.