Question

55. A small car is traveling at 30 m/s when itcrashes into a large truck stopped at a stoplight. Which of the following statements iscorrect?A. The truck and car experience the sameforce in the collision, but the carexperiences the greater acceleration.B. The truck and car experience the sameacceleration in the collision, but the carexperiences the greater force.С. The truck and car experience the sameacceleration in the collision, but thetruck experiences the greater force.D. The truck and car experience the sameforce in the collision, but the truckexperiences the greater acceleration

Answer 1

Given, a car traveling at 30 m/s crashes into a truck that is at rest.

From Newton's third law, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Thus, when the car crashes into the truck, it exerts a certain force, and the truck in turn exerts an equal force on the car.

Therefore the car and the truck experience the same force.

From Newton's second law,

`F=ma`

Where F is the force exerted on an object of mass m and a is the acceleration of the object due to the force F.

Thus the mass and acceleration are inversely proportional to each other, when the applied force is a constant, as seen from the above equation. In this case, we have concluded that the force applied to the truck and the car is the same.

Thus the truck, which has a greater mass will experience the smaller acceleration. And the car which has the lower mass will experience a higher acceleration.

Thus the car experiences a greater acceleration than the truck.

Therefore the correct answer is option A.