135k views
5 votes
The path of a stunt car that is driven off a cliff follows a curve typical of a projectile launched horizontallyCompared to the horizontal component of the car's velocity at the beginning, the horizontal component of the car's velocitybefore hitting the ground is...AI do not knowBThe sameСSmallerDGreater

1 Answer

1 vote

The path of a stunt car that is driven off a cliff follows a curve typical of a projectile.

Recall that in a projectile motion, there are two types of velocity components

Horizontal velocity component

Vertical velocity component

The vertical component of the car's velocity keeps on changing due to the gravitational acceleration.

On the other hand, the horizontal component of the car's velocity is independent of the gravitational acceleration meaning that it has no effect on it.

This is the reason that the horizontal component of velocity never changes.

Below is the illustration of the concept

You can see that the vertical component of the velocity is changing but the horizontal component of velocity does not change.

Therefore, we can conclude that the horizontal component of the car's velocity at the beginning and the horizontal component of the car's velocity before hitting the ground is the same.

Hence, option B is the correct answer.

The path of a stunt car that is driven off a cliff follows a curve typical of a projectile-example-1
User Alexey Kulikov
by
3.2k points