You and your friends are watching the races at a drag strip. (In a drag race, tw

Question

You and your friends are watching the races at a drag strip. (In a drag race, two cars race down a short, straight track, usually about 1/4 mile long.) You all are timing the races, so that you can double-check the official times.

Each person has their own stop watch, which you have electronically tested and you know that they are all accurate to the nearest 1/100 of a second.

Before the races, you all stopped off at an arcade and played a game which measured your reaction times. Your and your friends' reaction times varied between 0.1 and 0.25 seconds.

At the race, you all stand near, but not exactly at, the finish line. This results in each of you making an error of 1-5 feet in where each one of you perceives each car to cross the finish line. The race cars are all travelling over 200 miles per hour when they cross the finish line.

What is the largest source of error in your time measurements?

Hint: There are 5280 feet in a mile.

Explanation / Answer

Track is 1/4 miles long and speed is at 200 miles per hour. Hence race time is very small 4.5 seconds.

Reaction time is 0.1 to 0.25 second is amounts to a large error.

The instrument is made of electronic or mechanical it's precession isn1/100 of second, both causes same error in measurement.

1-5 feet difference in 1320 feet race results to an error of 0.001 second.

Hence reaction time is the major source of error.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse Y
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.