Mandy is really into physics. Sadly, she can't afford the wonderful Feynman Lectures on Physics . But her interest was so strong that one day she decided to steal the books from the university library. She then drove away and has now been gone for 24 hours. Given that:
She stops 30min every 3h to rest.
She always drives at a speed of 108km/h except when she slows down/speeds up (at a constant rate of ) before and after each pause.
Consider a circle, whose origin is the library, such that Mandy has probability of being spotted anywhere outside that circle. Then what is (in km) the minimum radius of the circle?
Details and assumptions:
Mandy always travels on flat land.
The time it takes to slow down/speed up is taken off driving time.
Round up your answer to the next integer.
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What path would take our book enthusiast the farthest from the library? Well, any path going away in a straight line from the library (still assuming it's all happening on flat land). That's obvious but it allows us to reduce the problem to a 1-dimensional situation.
There is enough information to then construct v ( t ) , Mandy's velocity as a function of time. Her routine is drive 3h, stop 30min, drive 3h...
We know that she drives away from the library. That means accelerates ( a = 1 m / s ² ) from 0 to 108km/h (or 30m/s) in t=\frac { v }{ a } =\frac { 30 }{ 1 } =30s , then drives at 108km/h for 2h59 (10740s) and decelerates ( a = − 1 m / s ² ) from 30m/s to 0.
That's 3 hours of driving, how far does that take her?
So what we're looking for is the area under v ( t ) (remember d r = v d t ).
The easiest way to do so is by looking at v ( t ) from t=0 to t=10800s and noticing it's a very simple 'curve':
So, basically a 30x30 square and a 10740x30 rectangle.
We found the distance traveled during the driving pattern. This pattern occurs 7 times in 24 hours.
Therefore,
7 R ~ = 3 0 2 + 3 0 × 1 0 7 4 0 = \int _{ 0 }^{ 30 }{ tdt } +\int _{ 0 }^{ 10740 }{ 30dt } +\int _{ 0 }^{ 30 }{ -t+30 } dt = 323100
and
R ~ = 2 2 6 1 7 0 0 m = 2 2 6 2 k m
There is no chance to spot her further than 2262km from the library after she's been gone for exactly 24h.