Recent content by thehitchcocks

You guys are fantastic! Thanks for the quick and helpful replies ("like" given to all 3), which we discussed together yesterday, and used to work the problem again this morning. To address the case where the blocks make contact, we solved for the following: "If a 0.5kg block is moving at 0.43...

Homework Statement A 0.5 g pellet is fired horizontally at two foam squares resting on a frictionless tabletop. The pellet rips through the first block (mass = 1 kg) and embeds itself in the second block (mass = 0.5 kg). As the bullet interacts with the blocks, it causes them to move with...

Thanks for all the replies! Super helpful. We understand now - we got ourselves wrapped up mistakenly in average velocity, when all we needed was initial velocity. Using initial velocity yields the correct answer. @RUber: Yes, the negative exponent was a typo - sorry about that, our first post...

Hello all! My son and I are working through AP Physics together in our homeschool. I'm a pre-med grad who's been fiddling with computers since I was a kid, and I now work as an identity and security expert for a large ecommerce company. I did fine in high school and college physics, but was...

The problem: A bullet is moving at a speed of 367 m/s when it embeds into a lump of moist clay. The bullet penetrates for a distance of 0.0621m. Determine the acceleration of the bullet while moving into the clay. I can get the correct answer by using Vf2 = Vi2 + 2ad (result: -1.08*10-6 m/s2)...