Class 11 Physics - Chapter Motion in a straight Line NCERT Solutions | The velocity-time graph of a particle in

A drunkard walking in a narrow lane takes 5 steps forward and 3 steps backward, followed again by 5 steps forward and 3 steps backward, and so on. Each step is 1 m long and requires 1 s. Plot the x-t graph of his motion. Determine graphically and otherwise how long the drunkard takes to fall in a pit 13 m away from the start.

A woman starts from her home at 9.00 am, walks with a speed of 5 km h^-1 on a straight road up to her office 2.5 km away, stays at the office up to 5.00 pm, and returns home by an auto with a speed of 25 km h^-1. Choose suitable scales and plot the x-t graph of her motion.

A ball is dropped from a height of 90 m on a floor. At each collision with the floor, the ball loses one tenth of its speed. Plot the speed-time graph of its motion between t = 0 to 12 s.

A man walks on a straight road from his home to a market 2.5 km away with a speed of 5 km h ^–1. Finding the market closed, he instantly turns and walks back home with a speed of 7.5 km h^–1. What is the

a) magnitude of average velocity, and

b) average speed of the man over the interval of time (i) 0 to 30 min, (ii) 0 to 50 min, (iii) 0 to 40 min?

[Note: You will appreciate from this exercise why it is better to define average speed as total path length divided by time, and not as magnitude of average velocity. You would not like to tell the tired man on his return home that his average speed was zero!]

The position-time (x-t) graphs for two children A and B returning from their school O to their homes P and Q respectively are shown in Fig. 3.19. Choose the correct entries in the brackets below;

(a) (A/B) lives closer to the school than (B/A)

(b) (A/B) starts from the school earlier than (B/A)

(c) (A/B) walks faster than (B/A)

(d) A and B reach home at the (same/different) time

(e) (A/B) overtakes (B/A) on the road (once/twice).

A car moving along a straight highway with a speed of 126 km h^–1 is brought to a stop within a distance of 200 m. What is the retardation of the car (assumed uniform), and how long does it take for the car to stop?

A player throws a ball upwards with an initial speed of 29.4 m s^–1. What is the direction of acceleration during the upward motion of the ball? What are the velocity and acceleration of the ball at the highest point of its motion?

Choose the x = 0 m and t = 0 s to be the location and time of the ball at its highest point, vertically downward direction to be the positive direction of x-axis, and give the signs of position, velocity and acceleration of the ball during its upward, and downward motion. To what height does the ball rise and after how long does the ball return to the player’s hands? (Take g = 9.8 m s^–2 and neglect air resistance).

Explain clearly, with examples, the distinction between:

a) magnitude of displacement (sometimes called distance) over an interval of time, and the total length of path covered by a particle over the same interval;

b) magnitude of average velocity over an interval of time, and the average speed over the same interval. [Average speed of a particle over an interval of time is defined as the total path length divided by the time interval]. Show in both (a) and (b) that the second quantity is either greater than or equal to the first.

When is the equality sign true? [For simplicity, consider one-dimensional motion only].

Two towns A and B are connected by a regular bus service with a bus leaving in either direction every T minutes. A man cycling with a speed of 20 km h^–1 in the direction A to B notices that a bus goes past him every 18 min in the direction of his motion, and every 6 min in the opposite direction. What is the period T of the bus service and with what speed (assumed constant) do the buses ply on the road?

Some of the most profound statements on the nature of science have come from Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of all time. What do you think did Einstein mean when he said : “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible”?

The sign of work done by a force on a body is important to understand. State carefully if the following quantities are positive or negative:

(a) work done by a man in lifting a bucket out of a well by means of a rope tied to the bucket.

(b) work done by gravitational force in the above case,

(c) work done by friction on a body sliding down an inclined plane,

(d) work done by an applied force on a body moving on a rough horizontal plane with uniform velocity,

(e) work done by the resistive force of air on a vibrating pendulum in bringing it to rest.

A geyser heats water flowing at the rate of 3.0 litres per minute from 27 °C to 77 °C. If the geyser operates on a gas burner, what is the rate of consumption of the fuel if its heat of combustion is 4.0 x 10⁴ J/g?

Estimate the fraction of molecular volume to the actual volume occupied by oxygen gas at STP. Take the diameter of an oxygen molecule to be 3Å.

Ten one-rupee coins are put on top of each other on a table. Each coin has a mass m. Give the magnitude and direction of

(a) the force on the 7^th coin (counted from the bottom) due to all the coins on its top,

(b) the force on the 7^th coin by the eighth coin,

(c) the reaction of the 6^th coin on the 7^th coin.

Toricelli's barometer used mercury. Pascal duplicated it using French wine of density 984 kg m^-3. Determine the height of the wine column for normal atmospheric pressure.

The mass of a box measured by a grocer's balance is 2.300 kg. Two gold pieces of masses 20.15 g and 20.17 g are added to the box. What is

(a) the total mass of the box,

(b) the difference in the masses of the pieces to correct significant figures?

A book with many printing errors contains four different formulas for the displacement y of a particle undergoing a certain periodic motion:

(a = maximum displacement of the particle, v = speed of the particle. T = time-period of motion). Rule out the wrong formulas on dimensional grounds.

A steel wire has a length of 12.0 m and a mass of 2.10 kg. What should be the tension in the wire so that speed of a transverse wave on the wire equals the speed of sound in dry air at 20 °C = 343 m s^-1.

A metre long narrow bore held horizontally (and closed at one end) contains a 76 cm long mercury thread, which traps a 15 cm column of air. What happens if the tube is held vertically with the open end at the bottom?

A bat is flitting about in a cave, navigating via ultrasonic beeps. Assume that the sound emission frequency of the bat is 40 kHz. During one fast swoop directly toward a flat wall surface, the bat is moving at 0.03 times the speed of sound in air. What frequency does the bat hear reflected off the wall?

Torques of equal magnitude are applied to a hollow cylinder and a solid sphere, both having the same mass and radius. The cylinder is free to rotate about its standard axis of symmetry, and the sphere is free to rotate about an axis passing through its centre. Which of the two will acquire a greater angular speed after a given time?

A large steel wheel is to be fitted on to a shaft of the same material. At 27 °C, the outer diameter of the shaft is 8.70 cm and the diameter of the central hole in the wheel is 8.69 cm. The shaft is cooled using ‘dry ice’. At what temperature of the shaft does the wheel slip on the shaft? Assume coefficient of linear expansion of the steel to be constant over the required temperature range: αsteel = 1.20 x 10^–5 K^–1.

The length, breadth and thickness of a rectangular sheet of metal are 4.234 m, 1.005 m, and 2.01 cm respectively. Give the area and volume of the sheet to correct significant figures.