A truck travels beneath an airplane that is moving 120 km/h at an angle of 24◦ to the ground.
How fast must the truck travel to stay beneath the airplane?
Vt = 120cos24 = 18.27km/h.
hey im typing that in my caculator and its not getting 18.27. what am I doing wrong?
Type 120arccos(24)
109.625
To determine how fast the truck must travel to stay beneath the airplane, we need to find the horizontal speed component of the airplane.
Given:
Airplane's speed = 120 km/h
Angle of the airplane with respect to the ground = 24 degrees
To find the horizontal speed of the airplane, we can use trigonometry. The horizontal speed component of the airplane is given by:
horizontal speed = airplane's speed * cosine(angle)
So, the horizontal speed of the airplane is:
horizontal speed = 120 km/h * cos(24 degrees)
Using a calculator, we can evaluate the cosine of 24 degrees:
cos(24 degrees) ≈ 0.9135
Now, we can calculate the horizontal speed of the airplane:
horizontal speed = 120 km/h * 0.9135 ≈ 109.62 km/h
Therefore, the truck must travel at a speed of approximately 109.62 km/h to stay beneath the airplane.