8f7830…: “Prior to a rainy butterfly”

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Worked Out Examples Problem Videos

The following video may be helpful when trying to solve this example. Note that you may skip to the end of the video to get completion credit for this page if you don’t need to watch it.

Practice Problems: Newtonian Mechanics

1 :

A particle’s position in space along a straight path is modeled by the function $s(t) = \sage {p1f1}$ . Calculate:

The particle’s velocity at any time $t$ : $v(t) = \answer {\sage {p1ans1}}$
The particle’s acceleration at any time $t$ : $a(t) = \answer {\sage {p1ans2}}$

A particle’s velocity is the derivative of it’s position and the acceleration is the derivative of it’s velocity.

2 : A particle’s position in space along a straight path is modeled by the function $s(t) = \sage {p2fdisp}$ . Determine the particle’s net distance traveled from $t=\sage {p2start}$ to $t=\sage {p2end}$ : $\answer {\sage {p2ans1}}$ .

A particle’s net distance traveled is merely the difference from where it started to where it ended, you don’t need to determine if the particle backtracked.

2.1 : Determine the particle’s total distance traveled from $t=\sage {p2start}$ to $t=\sage {p2end}$ : $\answer {\sage {p2ans2}}$ .

A particle’s total distance traveled counts all the distance covered. Importantly this means you need to determine if, and for how far, the particle changed direction and add the absolute value of all distance covered.