Read each statement below carefully and state with reasons and examples, if it is true or false; A particle in one-dimensional motion
(a) with zero speed at an instant may have non-zero acceleration at that instant
(b) with zero speed may have non-zero velocity,
(c) with constant speed must have zero acceleration,
(d) with positive value of acceleration mustbe speeding up.
(a) True. When an object is thrown vertically up in the air, its speed becomes zero at maximum height. However, it has acceleration equal to the acceleration due to gravity (g) that acts in the downward direction at that point.
(b) False. Speed is the magnitude of velocity. When speed is zero, the magnitude of velocity along with the velocity is zero.
(c) True. A car moving on a straight highway with constant speed will have constant velocity. Since acceleration is defined as the rate of change of velocity, acceleration of the car is also zero.
(d) False. This statement is false in the situation when acceleration is positive and velocity is negative at the instant time taken as origin. Then, for all the time before velocity becomes zero, there is slowing down of the particle. Such a case happens when a particle is projected upwards.
This statement is true when both velocity and acceleration are positive, at the instant time taken as origin. Such a case happens when a particle is moving with positive acceleration or falling vertically downwards from a height.
A drunkard walking in a narrow lane takes 5 steps forward and 3 steps backward, followed again by 5 steps forward and 3 steps backward, and so on. Each step is 1 m long and requires 1 s. Plot the x-t graph of his motion. Determine graphically and otherwise how long the drunkard takes to fall in a pit 13 m away from the start.
A woman starts from her home at 9.00 am, walks with a speed of 5 km h-1 on a straight road up to her office 2.5 km away, stays at the office up to 5.00 pm, and returns home by an auto with a speed of 25 km h-1. Choose suitable scales and plot the x-t graph of her motion.
A ball is dropped from a height of 90 m on a floor. At each collision with the floor, the ball loses one tenth of its speed. Plot the speed-time graph of its motion between t = 0 to 12 s.
A man walks on a straight road from his home to a market 2.5 km away with a speed of 5 km h –1. Finding the market closed, he instantly turns and walks back home with a speed of 7.5 km h–1. What is the
a) magnitude of average velocity, and
b) average speed of the man over the interval of time (i) 0 to 30 min, (ii) 0 to 50 min, (iii) 0 to 40 min?
[Note: You will appreciate from this exercise why it is better to define average speed as total path length divided by time, and not as magnitude of average velocity. You would not like to tell the tired man on his return home that his average speed was zero!]
The position-time (x-t) graphs for two children A and B returning from their school O to their homes P and Q respectively are shown in Fig. 3.19. Choose the correct entries in the brackets below;
(a) (A/B) lives closer to the school than (B/A)
(b) (A/B) starts from the school earlier than (B/A)
(c) (A/B) walks faster than (B/A)
(d) A and B reach home at the (same/different) time
(e) (A/B) overtakes (B/A) on the road (once/twice).
A car moving along a straight highway with a speed of 126 km h–1 is brought to a stop within a distance of 200 m. What is the retardation of the car (assumed uniform), and how long does it take for the car to stop?
A player throws a ball upwards with an initial speed of 29.4 m s–1. What is the direction of acceleration during the upward motion of the ball? What are the velocity and acceleration of the ball at the highest point of its motion?
Choose the x = 0 m and t = 0 s to be the location and time of the ball at its highest point, vertically downward direction to be the positive direction of x-axis, and give the signs of position, velocity and acceleration of the ball during its upward, and downward motion. To what height does the ball rise and after how long does the ball return to the player’s hands? (Take g = 9.8 m s–2 and neglect air resistance).
Explain clearly, with examples, the distinction between:
a) magnitude of displacement (sometimes called distance) over an interval of time, and the total length of path covered by a particle over the same interval;
b) magnitude of average velocity over an interval of time, and the average speed over the same interval. [Average speed of a particle over an interval of time is defined as the total path length divided by the time interval]. Show in both (a) and (b) that the second quantity is either greater than or equal to the first.
When is the equality sign true? [For simplicity, consider one-dimensional motion only].
Two towns A and B are connected by a regular bus service with a bus leaving in either direction every T minutes. A man cycling with a speed of 20 km h–1 in the direction A to B notices that a bus goes past him every 18 min in the direction of his motion, and every 6 min in the opposite direction. What is the period T of the bus service and with what speed (assumed constant) do the buses ply on the road?
Some of the most profound statements on the nature of science have come from Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of all time. What do you think did Einstein mean when he said : “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible”?
The sign of work done by a force on a body is important to understand. State carefully if the following quantities are positive or negative:
(a) work done by a man in lifting a bucket out of a well by means of a rope tied to the bucket.
(b) work done by gravitational force in the above case,
(c) work done by friction on a body sliding down an inclined plane,
(d) work done by an applied force on a body moving on a rough horizontal plane with uniform velocity,
(e) work done by the resistive force of air on a vibrating pendulum in bringing it to rest.
A geyser heats water flowing at the rate of 3.0 litres per minute from 27 °C to 77 °C. If the geyser operates on a gas burner, what is the rate of consumption of the fuel if its heat of combustion is 4.0 x 104 J/g?
Estimate the fraction of molecular volume to the actual volume occupied by oxygen gas at STP. Take the diameter of an oxygen molecule to be 3Å.
Read the following two statements below carefully and state, with reasons, if it is true or false.
(a) The Young’s modulus of rubber is greater than that of steel;
(b) The stretching of a coil is determined by its shear modulus.
It is a well known fact that during a total solar eclipse the disk of the moon almost completely covers the disk of the Sun. From this fact and from the information you can gather from examples 2.3 and 2.4, determine the approximate diameter of the moon.
A man walking briskly in rain with speed v must slant his umbrella forward making an angle θ with the vertical. A student derives the following relation between θ and v : tan θ = v and checks that the relation has a correct limit: as v → 0, θ →0, as expected. (We are assuming there is no strong wind and that the rain falls vertically for a stationary man). Do you think this relation can be correct ? If not, guess the correct relation.
A child sits stationary at one end of a long trolley moving uniformly with a speed V on a smooth horizontal floor. If the child gets up and runs about on the trolley in any manner, what is the speed of the CM of the (trolley + child) system?
Given a + b + c + d = 0, which of the following statements are correct:
(a) a, b, c, and d must each be a null vector,
(b) The magnitude of (a + c) equals the magnitude of (b+ d),
(c) The magnitude of a can never be greater than the sum of the magnitudes of b, c, and d,
(d) b + c must lie in the plane of a and d if a and d are not collinear, and in the line of a and d, if they are collinear?
A block of mass 25 kg is raised by a 50 kg man in two different ways as shown in Fig. 5.19. What is the action on the floor by the man in the two cases? If the floor yields to a normal force of 700 N, which mode should the man adopt to lift the block without the floor yielding?
Fill in the blanks by suitable conversion of units:
(a) 1 kg m2s–2= ....g cm2 s–2
(b) 1 m =..... ly
(c) 3.0 m s–2=.... km h–2
(d) G = 6.67 × 10–11 N m2 (kg)–2=.... (cm)3s–2 g–1.
Read each statement below carefully and state, with reasons and examples, if it is true or false:
A scalar quantity is one that
(a) is conserved in a process
(b) can never take negative values
(c) must be dimensionless
(d) does not vary from one point to another in space
(e) has the same value for observers with different orientations of axes
Which of the following examples represent (nearly) simple harmonic motion and which represent periodic but not simple harmonic motion?
(a) the rotation of earth about its axis.
(b) motion of an oscillating mercury column in a U-tube.
(c) motion of a ball bearing inside a smooth curved bowl, when released from a point slightly above the lower most point.
(d) general vibrations of a polyatomic molecule about its equilibrium position.