Question

An automobile engineer found that the impact of a truck colliding at 14 km/h with a concrete pillar caused the bumper to indent only 6.2 cm. The truck stopped. Determine the acceleration of the truck during the collision.

Answer 1

Hello
Here we must use the equation of motion
v^2 = u^2 + 2as; where v is final velocity, u is initial velocity, a is the acceleratoin and is the distance travelled.
We select this one because the time of collision is unknown to us.
We know the truck stopped so its final velocity is 0; thus v = 0.
Converting the initial velocity to SI units, we get 3.89 m/s.
The distance traveled, s, is 0.062 meters.
Inserting all of these values into the equation,
0 = (3.89)^2 + 2(a)(0.062)
and solving for a, we get a to be
-122.0 ms^(-2)
The negative sign indicates the acceleration is in the opposite direction to the initial motion, which means the truck decelerated. This is consistent with the given condition.