Physics 1205
Assignment #3



Problem A : You have a summer job with an insurance company and have been asked to help with the investigation of a tragic accident. When you visit the scene, you see a road running straight down a hill which has a slope of 10 degrees to the horizontal. At the bottom of the hill, the road goes horizontally for a very short distance becoming a parking lot overlooking a cliff. The cliff has a vertical drop of 400 feet to the horizontal ground below where a car is wrecked 30 feet from the base of the cliff. The only witness claims that the car was parked on the hill, he can't remember exactly where, and the car just began coasting down the road. He did not hear an engine so he thinks that the driver was drunk and passed out knocking off his emergency brake. He remembers that the car took about 3 seconds to get down the hill. After looking pensive, your boss tells you to calculate the car's average acceleration coming down the hill based on the statement of the witness and the other facts in the case. She reminds you to be careful to write down all of your assumptions so she can evaluate the applicability of the calculation to this situation. Obviously she suspects foul play. What do you tell your boss? Do you call the homicide division?
Exam 1 will be held in class on Friday, September 19, 2008. It will cover material from Chapters 1 through 4. I will try to let you start five minutes early.