Jumping over Row of Parked Cars

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A car drives off a ramp over a row of parked cars. If the initial velocity is large enough, the car flies over them without hitting any. The horizontal speed is constant during the flight while vertically the car is in free fall. So the car needs a horizontal speed that lets it clear the cars before it reaches the roof of the last one.

Contributed by: Enrique Zeleny (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


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Details

The height of the parked cars is 1.5 m, the horizontal length of each car is 2 m, and the height of the ramp is 3.5 m.

The time needed for the car to reach the ground is and the distance covered is , where is the acceleration due to gravity and is the initial velocity.



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