Monkey and Hunter
Classical Mechanics
Level
2
A hunter points his gun directly at a monkey hanging in a tree. The monkey releases his grip at the same moment that the hunter fires his gun. What happens?
The bullet hits the monkey
The bullet goes below the monkey
The bullet goes over the monkey’s head
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
1 solution
The bullet will always hit the monkey. It doesn't matter how fast the bullet travels through the air (as long as it doesn't take so long that is falls on the ground). It doesn't even matter if there's air resistance. The motion of the bullet can be separated into x, y, and z motion. From here, the bullet and the monkey both accelerate towards the ground at the same rate, so no matter how long it takes for the bullet's path to intersect with the monkey's path, they will always intersect at the same time.