An airplane is dropping bales of hay to cattle stranded in a blizzard on the Great Plains. The pilot releases the bales at 160 m above the level ground when the plane is flying at 60.0 m/s 45.0 degrees above the horizontal.

How far in front of the cattle should the pilot release the hay in meters so that the bales will land at the point where the cattle are stranded?

Question

An airplane is dropping bales of hay to cattle stranded in a blizzard on the Great Plains. The pilot releases the bales at 160 m above the level ground when the plane is flying at 60.0 m/s 45.0 degrees above the horizontal.

How far in front of the cattle should the pilot release the hay in meters so that the bales will land at the point where the cattle are stranded?

revircs · Answer

I really am having trouble with this question. Dont I need to know the position of the cattle in order to determine what is in front/ behind?

irishboy123 · Answer

yes

you should!

revircs · Answer

This is all the information that I am given, is there no way to solve this?

revircs · Answer

So I compared my work to the answer given in the book, and they just solved for distance traveled...

revircs · Answer

In the horizontal axis*

irishboy123 · Answer

which is not hard

revircs · Answer

Yeah, the question was just worded strangely

irishboy123 · Answer

so you solve that and then tie it into the position of the cows!!

revircs · Answer

I ended up getting x=629.4m, but how can I tie this into the position of the cows when we are given no information other than there are cows?

irishboy123 · Answer

forget about the cows for a second

just doing it gets you a range of 629.4m

so if the cows just happened to be 629.4m ahead of you, you would hit them.

revircs · Answer

Oooohhhh okay, that makes sense. Thank you so much!

irishboy123 · Answer

spotty dog!!