Question

Suppose a car travels 106 km at a speed of 28 m/s and uses 1.9 gals of gasoline in the process. Only 30% of the gasoline goes into useful work to keep the car moving at a constant speed.

In this problem, you may assume that 1 gallon of gasoline produces 1.2 × 10^8 J of energy.
(a) What is the magnitude of the force exerted to keep the car moving at constant speed?
(b) If the required force is directly proportional to speed, how many gallons will be used to drive 106 km at a speed of 28.0 m/s?

Answer 1

a) The magnitude of the force is 968 N

b) For a constant speed of 30 m/s, the magnitude of the force is 1,037 N

Step-by-step explanation:

NOTE: The question b) will be changed in other to give a meaningful answer, because it is the same speed as the original (the gallons would be 1.9, as in the original).

Information given:

d = 106 km = 106,000 m

v1 = 28 m/s

G = 1.9 gal

η = 0.3

Eff = 1.2 x 10^8 J/gal

a) We can express the energy used as the work done. This work has the following expression:

`W=F\cdot d`

Then, we can derive the magnitude of the force as:

`F=(W)/(d)=(\eta\cdot (G\cdot Eff))/(d)=(0.3*1.9*(1.8*10^8))/(106*10^3) =968\,N`

b) We will calculate the force for a speed of 30 m/s.

If the force is proportional to the speed, we have:

`F_2=F_1((v_2)/(v_1) )=968((30)/(28) )=968*1.0714=1,037\,N`