Question

Acceleration equations:

1) While traveling along a highway, a driver speeds up from 15 m/sec to 30 m/sec in 15 seconds. What is the car's acceleration?
2) While traveling along a highway, a driver slows down from 50 m/sec to 10 m/sec in 12 sec. What is the car's acceleration?
3) A submarine can reach top speeds of about 18 m/s. If a submarine started from rest and it takes 25.6 seconds to reach this speed, what is it's acceleration?
4) Calculate the acceleration of an airplane that starts at rest and reaches a speed of 45 m/sec in 9 seconds.
5) Calculate the acceleration of a car that slows from 50 m/sec to 30 m/sec in 10 seconds.
6) On a scooter, you rapidly pick up speed as you roll down a hill. You start down the hill at a speed of 6 m/s. 3 seconds later, at the bottom of the hill, your speed is 17 m/s. What is your average acceleration?
7) A parachute on a racing dragster opens and changes the speed of the car from 85 m/s to 45 m/s in a period of 4.5 seconds. What is the acceleration of the dragster?
8) A ball accelerates down a hill from 0 km/h to 15 km/h in 10 seconds. What is the acceleration?
9) The cheetah, which is the fastest land mammal, can accelerate from 0.0 mi/hr in 3.0 seconds. What is the acceleration of the cheetah? Give you answer of units of mph/sec.
10) The Lamborghini Diablo sports car can accelerate from 0.0 km/hr to 99.2 km/hr in 4.0 seconds. What is the acceleration of this car? Give your answer in units of kilometers per hour per second.
11) Which has greater acceleration, the cheetah (problem 3) or the Lamborghini Diablo (problem 4)? (Hint: 1.61 kilometers is equal to 1 mile.) Show your work.
12)Stan is skiing down a steep hill. He started from rest and, as he moved down the hill, his speed increased by 15.2 m/s after 5 seconds. What is acceleration of Stan?
13) Lidia is driving her car at a speed of 23 m/s when she suddenly steps on the brakes and comes to a stop in 1.8 seconds. What was Lidia's acceleration?

Answer 1

Acceleration is calculated using the change in velocity over time. The problems provided are examples of such calculations, which yield the car's acceleration under different conditions.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate a car's acceleration, we use the formula a = ∆v/∆t, where a is acceleration, ∆v is the change in velocity, and ∆t is the change in time.

• For the driver increasing speed from 15 m/s to 30 m/s in 15 seconds: a = (30 - 15) m/s / 15 s = 1 m/s².
• For the driver slowing down from 50 m/s to 10 m/s in 12 seconds: a = (10 - 50) m/s / 12 s = -3.33 m/s².
• For the submarine accelerating from rest to 18 m/s in 25.6 seconds: a = (18 - 0) m/s / 25.6 s ≈ 0.70 m/s².

Each problem follows the same mathematical approach using the acceleration equation: Plug in the initial and final velocities as well as the time to solve for acceleration.