How to get the acceleration

[bamfdan]

Sam (85 kg) takes off (from rest) up a 50 m high, 10° frictionless slope on his jet-powered skis. The skis have a thrust of 180 N. He keeps his skis tilted at 10° after becoming airborne.

i understand the whole concept, but i don't understand how to get the acceleration, the frictionless keeps confusing me.

please help me out, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[tiny-tim]

Welcome to PF!

Sam (85 kg) takes off (from rest) up a 50 m high, 10° frictionless slope on his jet-powered skis. The skis have a thrust of 180 N. He keeps his skis tilted at 10° after becoming airborne.

i understand the whole concept, but i don't understand how to get the acceleration, the frictionless keeps confusing me.

Hi bamfdan! Welcome to PF!

In an exam question like this, "jet-powered" means that there is a constant force that points in the same direction as the skis.

So the acceleration due to the jet-power is in that direction, and is found from F = ma.

"frictionless" means that, while he is still on the slope, the only forces are the jet-power, gravity, and the normal force.

Does that help?

 

[baba89]

To calculate the acceleration, we can use the equation F=ma, where F is the net force acting on an object, m is the mass of the object, and a is the acceleration. In this scenario, the net force is the thrust from the jet-powered skis, which is 180 N. We also know the mass of Sam, which is 85 kg.

To find the acceleration, we need to first find the net force acting on Sam. Since the slope is frictionless, we can assume that there is no force acting against the motion of Sam. This means that the net force is equal to the thrust from the skis, which is 180 N.

Now, we can plug in the values into the equation F=ma and solve for a. This gives us a=180 N/85 kg, which is approximately 2.12 m/s^2. This is the acceleration of Sam as he takes off up the slope.

It is important to note that the acceleration will remain constant as long as the net force remains constant. In this case, the thrust from the skis will remain constant, so the acceleration will also remain constant. The frictionless slope does not affect the acceleration in this scenario.

I hope this helps clarify the concept of acceleration for you. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask.