SOLUTION: A physics student standing on a bridge drops a rock into the water below. It takes 1.7 seconds for the rock to hit the water. What is the maximum speed of the falling rock? You can

Question 934627: A physics student standing on a bridge drops a rock into the water below. It takes 1.7 seconds for the rock to hit the water. What is the maximum speed of the falling rock? You can assume that the air resistance is negligible.
Found 2 solutions by TimothyLamb, KMST:
Answer by TimothyLamb(4379) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
velocity equation due to gravity:
---
v = gt + vi
vi = 0
g = 32 ft/ss
---
v = 32*1.7
v = 54.4 ft/sec
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Answer by KMST(5328) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
A physics student knows that the acceleration of gravity is
or .
If air resistance is negligible, the only force acting on a rock dropped is gravity,
and that would increase the speed of the rock by approximatel
9.8 m/s (32 ft/s) each second.
If the initial speed of the rock was zero, because it was being simply dropped, not thrown with an initial push up or down,
the speed will increase from zero until the rock hits the water at a maximum speed of
or
.

If the student has learned enough physics,
he would point out that the rock has always been moving along with the Earth,
rotating around the Earth's axis with a sizable constant horizontal speed (up to about 464 m/s),
and moving along Earth's orbit at about 30,000 m/s.
Compared to those speeds, the rock's change in speed due to gravity is really negligible. The rock's speed has been about constant at 30,000 m/s all along.
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