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A spaceship starting from a resting position accelerates at a constant rate of 9.8 meters per second per second. How long and how far will it take the spaceship to reach a speed of 1 percent the speed of light (300,000,000 m/s)

HOW LONG ANSWER CHOICES
A. 3.5 days
B. 35.4 days
C. 354 days
D. 3403 days
HOW FAR ANSWER CHOICES
A. 3.1 × 106 m
B. 2.94 × 108 m
C. 7.8 × 1010 m
D. 4.6 × 1013 m
30 POINTS

User Maikzen
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8.3k points

1 Answer

5 votes

Accelerating at 9.8 m/s² means that every second, the speed is 9.8 m/s faster than it was a second earlier. It's not important to the problem, but this number (9.8) happens to be the acceleration of gravity on Earth.

1% of the speed of light = (300,000,000 m/s) / 100 = 3,000,000 m/s .

Starting from zero speed, moving (9.8 m/s) faster every second,
how long does it take to reach 3,000,000 m/s ?

(3,000,000 m/s) / (9.8 m/s²) = 306,122 seconds .
(That's 5,102 minutes.)
(That's 85 hours.)
(That's 3.54 days.)

Speed at the beginning . . . zero .
Speed at the end . . . 3,000,000 m/s
Average speed . . . . . 1,500,000 m/s

Distance = (average speed) x (time)

= (1,500,000 m/s) x (306,122 sec) = 4.592 x 10¹¹ meters

= 459 million kilometers

That's like from Earth
to Sun
to Earth
to Sun.

User George Reith
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8.4k points

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