6/1/07

The Laundry Cart

Question: A man in a Laundromat throws a 35kg bag of laundry into a stationary laundry cart at 35 meters/sec. The cart starts moving at 15 meters/sec. towards the glass pane window. It crashes through the glass front window pane and falls at an acceleration of 9.8 meters/sec² onto a road in San Francisco. The cart turned 90° to the right down as it bounced off a car and caused the horn to beep at 95 db. The laundry cart accelerates 10 meters down the 35° grade hill before the road flattens out for an intersection. The cart passes 3.5 meters away from a trolley that was moving perpendicular to it, causing 7.5 people to gasp. The trolley continues forward onto a 45° grade hill and travels for 50 meters down it, scraping paint off of 2 cars and almost running over 3 pedestrians. The road levels out again and a car traveling perpendicular to the cart at ½ the speed must turn 35° to the right in 2.4 sec to dodge it. A second car dodges the cart in the same manner, but travels left and car A and car B collide, causing the two combined cars to travel southward 5.3 meters before coming to a stop. The cart continues 67 meters down a 50° slope before leveling out a final time. It travels 76 meters across 3 sidewalks and almost collides with 5.1 pedestrians before being propelled off the end of a dock at 70 miles/hour into the San Francisco Bay. Assuming that all intersections are 20 meters across and babies count as 1 tenth of a pedestrian, how much money did the man in the Laundromat spend during his trip, not counting legal fees?


Answer: There is not enough information to solve this problem. We must know what kinds of cars were damaged, how large the window pane was, how many loads of laundry were completed, and how much his medical bill cost after he was hit by a car during his chase of the laundry cart.


1 comment:

Tim P said...

There is not enough information to solve this problem. We must know what kinds of cars were damaged, how large the window pane was, how many loads of laundry were completed, and how much his medical bill cost after he was hit by a car during his chase of the laundry cart.