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Pi-Bond
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Homework Statement
(Kleppner & Kolenkow - Introduction to Mechanics - 3.12)
A sand-spraying locomotive sprays sand horizontally into a freight car situated ahead of it. The locomotive and freight car are not attached. The engineer in the locomotive maintains his speed so that the distance to the freight car is constant. The sand is transferred at a rate dm/dt = 10 kg/s with a velocity of 5 m/s relative to the locomotive. The car starts from rest with an initial mass of 2000 kg. Find its speed after 100 s.
Homework Equations
Momentum equation
The Attempt at a Solution
Let the mass of the freight car be m'. At some time t, the momentum of the car is given by:
[itex]P(t)=(m'+ t \frac{dm}{dt})u [/itex]
where u is the velocity at that time.
At a time t+dt, the momentum would be:
[itex]P(t+dt)=(m'+ (t+dt)\frac{dm}{dt})(u+du) [/itex]
The momentum change:
[itex]dP=P(t+dt)-P(t)=(m'+t\frac{dm}{dt})u+udm+(m'+t\frac{dm}{dt})du [/itex]
Basically I'm trying to make a differential equation for u. I'm not sure if the above is correct or not, and I also need some other expression for dP to equate this to. I'm assuming that will use the fact that the sand moves at 5 m/s relative to the locomotive and car setup (since they maintain a constant distance). How should I proceed?