Question

A cellphone is accidentally pushed off the roof of a building with some initial velocity in the horizontal direction. Describe the motion of the phone as it is observed by someone standing on the street. Don't forget the horizontal direction and the vertical direction.

Answer 1

The motion of the cellphone as observed from the street involves horizontal and vertical components. The horizontal motion is constant, while the vertical motion is influenced by gravity, resulting in free-fall motion.

Step-by-step explanation:

The motion of the cellphone as observed by someone standing on the street can be described by breaking it into horizontal and vertical components. In the horizontal direction, the motion is simple and constant, as there is no acceleration horizontally. In the vertical direction, the cellphone is affected by gravity and undergoes free-fall motion. It starts with zero initial vertical velocity, continuously accelerates downward due to gravity, reaches its maximum height where the vertical velocity is zero, and then falls back down with increasing downward velocity. This motion can be represented using the two-dimensional kinematic equations.