Final answer:
A car that collides with a truck at an intersection will decelerate rapidly due to the impact. Deceleration is a key concept in physics when analyzing vehicle motion, particularly in collision scenarios and when computing stopping distances and times.OPTION C.
Step-by-step explanation:
When a car enters an intersection at 20 m/s and collides with a truck, the car will experience a sudden deceleration due to the impact. Deceleration is the process by which a vehicle decreases its speed. Just as it's important to understand acceleration, where an object's velocity increases, knowing about deceleration is crucial when studying motion in physics, particularly when discussing collisions or stopping distances.
In conceptual physics problems like the ones mentioned, one might calculate various physical quantities, such as the amount of time it takes for a vehicle to stop given a certain deceleration rate, whether a truck has enough distance to stop before hitting an obstacle, or post-collision velocities in the case of an elastic collision.
As for the example problems provided for reference, they are illustrations of how to use Newton's laws of motion and kinematic equations to solve for time, acceleration, velocity, and displacement in different scenarios where vehicles are either accelerating, moving at constant velocities, or decelerating to a stop.