A skier moves 100m horizontally, then 35m uphill at an angle of 35 degrees above horizontal, what is the skier's displacement? Not just the answer ... how do I figure the problem?

Question

Johnny Collier

Physics

19 June, 06:32

A skier moves 100m horizontally, then 35m uphill at an angle of 35 degrees above horizontal, what is the skier's displacement? Not just the answer ... how do I figure the problem?

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Answers (1)

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Roger Baldwin · Answer 1

So, the easiest way to solve this vector problem will be to lay it out on a coordinate plane. The x axis is obviously horizontal. So you draw a line starting at the y axis that is parallel to the x axis and write down the measurement as 100m. Then you draw a diagonal line upward (it doesn't have to be to scale) on the end of the horizontal line and write down that measurement as 35m and that the angle is 35 degrees. For this situation you can just use pythagoras to solve for the total displacement. So you would do a squared + b squared to get your answer. So in this case 100 squared which is 10,000 and 35 squared which is 1225. Add them to get c squared which is 11,225 and then take the square root of that for your answer. Which would be 105.95.