Question

4. If you were to place the skater at the 5-meter mark, how high would the skater go on the other side of the track? Write your prediction, then try it and state whether it matched your prediction or not and, if not, what happened instead.

Answer 1

If the skater starts at the 5-meter mark, I predict that the skater will reach the same height on the other side of the track. This is because the parabolic shape of the skater's trajectory is symmetrical, meaning that if the skater reaches a certain height at one point, they will reach the same height at the same distance on the opposite side.

This prediction can be tested by drawing a parabolic shape to represent the skater's trajectory and finding the height at the 5-meter mark and the 5-meter mark on the other side of the track.

Answer 2

The questions concern the conservation of energy in a skater's movements, conservation of momentum when figure skaters interact, and solving a projectile motion problem for a basketball throw.

Step-by-step explanation:

The first question is about the conservation of energy in a skating scenario. If a skater starts at the 5-meter mark on one side of a track, the height the skater reaches on the other side should theoretically be the same, assuming no energy is lost to friction or air resistance. This is because the gravitational potential energy at the starting height is converted to kinetic energy at the bottom of the track and then back to gravitational potential energy on the other side.

In the second question, two figure skaters of different masses are involved in a momentum conservation problem. Given their masses and the initial speeds, we can calculate their final combined speed after the heavier skater picks up the lighter one without additional horizontal forces being applied. This is an application of the conservation of momentum since the net external force on the system is zero.

The third question is a projectile motion problem where a basketball player must throw a ball at a certain angle to make a basket. To find the angle, one must consider the initial velocity, the distances involved, and the height of the basket above the floor. This requires knowledge of kinematic equations and the ability to solve for the components of projectile motion.