Question

An airplane traveling at 1008 meters above the ocean at 135 km/h is going to drop a box of supplies to shipwrecked victims below. How many seconds before the plane is directly overhead should the box be dropped?

Answer 1

The horizontal velocity of the airplane is,

`v=135\text{ km/h}`

The height of the airplane is,

`h=1008\text{ m}`

The vertical initial velocity of the box is zero as the airplane is moving in the horizontal direction.

let the time to reach the victim is t.

we can write,

`\begin{gathered} h=(1)/(2)gt^2 \\ t=\sqrt[]{(2h)/(g)} \end{gathered}`

Substituting the values we get,

`\begin{gathered} t=\sqrt[]{(2*1008)/(9.8)} \\ =14.3\text{ s} \end{gathered}`

Hence the required time is 14.3 s