Context-rich Problem You have a summer job with an insurance company and have be

Question

Context-rich Problem
You have a summer job with an insurance company and have been asked to help with the investigation of a tragic "accident." When you visit the scene, you see a road running straight down a hill which has a slope of 10 degrees to the horizontal. At the bottom of the hill, the road goes horizontally for a very short distance becoming a parking lot overlooking a cliff. The cliff has a vertical drop of 400 feet to the horizontal ground below where a car is wrecked 30 feet from the base of the cliff. Was it possible that the driver fell asleep at the wheel and simply drove over the cliff? After looking pensive, your boss tells you to calculate the speed of the car as it left the top of the cliff. She reminds you to be careful to write down all of your assumptions so she can evaluate the applicability of the calculation to this situation. Obviously, she suspects foul play.

Please provide all steps.

Explanation / Answer

Time to fall: y = -400 = y0+v0t+0.5*at2

-400 = -4.9t2

t=9.04s

30m/9.04s = 3.32m/s

That converts to about 7.5 miles per hour which seems a little slow for falling asleep at the wheel

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