uhh WUT?!

NASA is tracking over 500 pieces of major space debris, but to his horror, Lieutentant Kompanek spotted a bit of unknown space debris outside of the window of the space ship, just 12 miles away, immediately to his left. It is moving along a right angle, away from the path of the space station. They had just barely missed hitting it, and he needed to report it to Captain Kemp.

For future reference, he pulls out a sighting device and aims it at the debris exactly 15 seconds after he first spotted it. Kompanek yells out the measurements that he is taking. He claims the angle between the path of the ship and the new position of the debris was 0.12 radians, and that the angle is increasing in measure at a rate of 0.02 radians/second. As Kemp enters this information into the computer, he puts in the additional fact that the space ship is moving at a rate of 24,000 miles/hour. But instead of getting the rate of the debris in miles per hour, he gets an error message instead.

And therein lies the question: are the numbers in this problem inconsistent, making the intended determination of the speed of the debris impossible? Or can we actually find the speed of the debris, implying that Captain Kemp may have entered the data into the computer incorrectly?


Can Anon determine the answer? Because I cannot.

tl;dr

Special relativity what?

For a moment there i thought this was one of those conspiracy theories. It's just a kid's physics homework.

>>4
wut

Third option: software bug. Increase your IT departments budget, faggot.

>>4
Looks more like calc I; trigonometric derivatives and whatnot.

>>3
Those don't look like near relativistic speeds.  It shouldn't matter much.

>>7
You don't need relativistic speeds for relativity to be relevant. The fact that there's no objective reference frame and thus no objective velocity is important no matter what the perceived velocities.
Though it's not particularly relevant in this case, since the fact these people seem to think they're moving at 24,000 mph suggests that they've already picked their reference frame.

The problem statement is strange. I had a hard time imagining the picture, but I think it means that the debris is initially 12 miles behind them, very near to the path they had just used. 15 seconds later, the debris is moving at a right angle to the path, and now makes an angle of .12 rads + .02rad/s . All the while the ship is moving away at 40/6 miles/second along the path it was taking.

I thought about the possibility that the path was circular around the earth so the computer wanted a speed/velocity in radians/time while the debris would be moving radially away from earths center, needing some miles/time measurement, but I think that's irrelevant if you choose your coordinate basis to account for everything. the ship would be moving straight along the i.sub.theta axis, and the debris along i.sub.r axis.

Perhaps because the debris is behind the ship, the radial measurements need to be (pi- .12)rads + (pi - .02)rads/sec because the angle measurement should begin in the forward path of the ship and move around to nearly pi radians behind them.

That may be the inconsistency, if they entered the position to be initially 12 miles behind them, and then measured the angle effectively 12 miles ahead of them. Let me know what you think.

oh, one more thing. the sine of the speed of .02rad/s plus 40/6 mile/s should be the answer. if the debris were moving at the same speed as the ship, the angle between them wouldn't change, but since there is a positive change, then the debris is moving faster.

You can take the speed of debris that you found and plug in 15 seconds to see how far it traveled since being 12 miles behind them.

Also, 12 miles divided by the debris speed is how long ago the debris was in their path from the time they first noticed it. That time multiplied by the ship's speed will tell you how close they were to hitting the debris.

anon is not here to do your homework.

>>1

go back to highschool and do your own homework. you have been B&, newfag.