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Femme_physics
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Homework Statement
A traffic officer riding on a bike starts his motion at point A, 3 seconds after the a private car went by him. The private car is traveling in constant velocity of 120 km/h.
The officer is accelerating at 5 meters per second squared, till a speed of 150 km/h, which is his allowed maximum velocity, and continues driving in that speed.
A) Calculate the time it takes the officer to catch up with the car.
B) Calculate the distance from point A till the point where the police officer moves ahead of the car.http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/7407/600d.jpg
Homework Equations
Kinematics
The Attempt at a Solution
I'll start with a disclaimer, I was a bit confused about how to go about solving that with my lack of experience solving kinematics problems. In fact, I'll continue with a confession -- I glimpsed at the solution manual and I saw that the solution starts by calculating when the cop reaches max velocity, and the distance he traveled when he reaches max velocity.
Now, how am I supposed to know if the cop didn't already pass the car BEFORE reaching max velocity? It may be intuitive, but what if velocity was 50, and not 5?
This may be a long thread since, though I understand the kinematics equations and how to manipulate them, I am highly inexperienced in picking the right ones to get what I need. So, the question above is my first question.
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