Question 202282
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You must have meant to say that your car goes from 14 meters <i>per second</i> to 71 meters <i>per second</i> in 3 seconds.  Otherwise, there is no specific solution to your problem -- that is to say that simply knowing that the vehicle moved from a point 14 meters from some arbitrary zero point to another point 71 meters from that arbitrary zero in 3 seconds tells you nothing about the acceleration of the vehicle.  However, let us proceed based on my stated assumption and the further assumptions that the acceleration during the 3 seconds in question was constant and that the vehicle was moving along a straight line path for the entire 3 seconds.


Acceleration is defined as the change in velocity per unit time.  Since we have assumed that the vehicle was moving in a straight line path, the only component of velocity that is changing is its magnitude.  The magnitude of the velocity in this case has changed from 14 to 71 meters per second, a total of 71 minus 14 = 57 meters per second.  Recalling the assumption that the acceleration is constant for the entire 3 seconds, the velocity must have changed one-third of the 57 meters per second for each of the 3 seconds, or 19 meters per second per second.  And that is your answer.


John
*[tex \LARGE e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0]
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