(i) Does it have a location in the space? (ii) Can it vary with time? (iii) Will two equal vectors a and b at different locations in space necessarily have identical physical effects? Give examples in support of your answer.
Question 2. A vector has both magnitude and direction. Does that mean anything that has magnitude and direction is necessarily a vector? The rotation of a body can be specified by the direction of the axis of rotation and the angle of rotation about the axis. Does that make any rotation a vector?
Question 3. Can you associate vectors with (a) the length of a wire bent into a loop (b) a plane area (c) a sphere? Explain.
Question 4. A bullet fired at an angle of 30° with the horizontal hits the ground 3 km away. By adjusting its angle of projection, can one hope to hit a target 5 km away? Assume the muzzle speed to the fixed, and neglect air resistance.
Question 5. A fighter plane flying horizontally at an altitude of 1.5 km with speed 720 km h - 1 passes directly overhead an anti-aircraft gun. At what angle from the vertical should the gun
be fired for the shell with muzzle speed 600 m s-1 to hit the plane? At what minimum altitude should the pilot fly the plane to avoid being hit? (Take g = 10 m s-2)?
Question 6. A car moving along a straight highway with 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?
Question 7. Two trains A and B of length 400 m each are moving on two parallel tracks with a uniform speed of 71 km h-1 in the same direction, with A ahead of B. The driver of B decides to overtake A and accelerates by 1 ms-1. If after 50 s, the guard of B just brushes past the driver of A, what was the original distance between them?
Question 8. On a two-lane road, car A is travelling with a speed of 36 km h -1. Two cars B and C approach car A in opposite directions with a speed of 54 km h -1 each. At a certain instant, when the distance AB is equal to AC, both being 1 km, B decides to overtake A before C does. What minimum acceleration of car B is required to avoid an accident?
Question 9. Two towns A and B are connected by regular bus service with a bus leaving in either direction every T minute. 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?
Question 10. A player throws a ball upwards with an initial speed of 29.4 ms -1. (a) What is the direction of acceleration during the upward motion of the ball? (b) What are the velocity and acceleration of the ball at the highest point of its motion? (c) 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. (d) 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).
Question 11. Read each statement below carefully and state with reasons and examples, if it is true or false; A particle in one-dimensional motion (a) with zero speed at an instant may have non-zero acceleration at that instant. (b) with, zero speed may have non-zero velocity. (c) with constant speed must have zero acceleration, (d) with positive value of acceleration must be speeding up.
Question 12. 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.
Question 13. 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], Question 14. 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!]
Question 15. In Exercises 3.13 and 3.14, we have carefully distinguished between average speed and magnitude of average velocity. No such distinction is necessary when we consider instantaneous speed and magnitude of velocity. The instantaneous speed is always equal to the magnitude of instantaneous velocity. Why?
Question 16. Look at the graphs (a) to (d) Fig. carefully and state, with reasons, which of these cannot possibly represent one-dimensional motion of a particle.
Question 17. Figure shows the x-t plot of one-dimensional motion of a particle. Is it correct to say from the graph that the particle moves in a straight line for t < 0 and on a parabolic path for t > 0? If not, suggest a suitable physical context for this graph. Question 18. A calorie is a unit of heat or energy and it equals about 4.2 J where 1 J = 1 kgm2 s-2. Suppose we employ a system of units in which the unit of mass equals a kg, the unit of length equals j8 m, the. unit of time is ys. Show that a calorie has a magnitude 4.2 α-1 β-2 γ2 in terms of the new units.
Question 19. Explain this statement clearly:
“To call a dimensional quantity ‘large’ or ‘small’ is meaningless without specifying a standard for comparison”. In view of this, reframe the following statements wherever necessary: (a) atoms are very small objects (b) a jet plane moves with great speed (c) the mass of Jupiter is very large (d) the air inside this room contains a large number of molecules (e) a proton is much more massive than an electron (f) the speed of sound is much smaller than the speed of light.
Question 20. A new unit of length is chosen such that the speed of light in vacuum is unity. What is the distance between the Sun and the Earth in terms of the new unit if light takes 8 min and 20 s to cover this distance?
Question 21. Which of the following is the most precise device for measuring length: (a) a vernier callipers with 20 divisions on the sliding scale. (b) a screw gauge of pitch 1 mm and 100 divisions on the circular scale. (c) an optical instrument that can measure length to within a wavelength of light?
Question 22. A student measures the thickness of a human hair by looking at it through a microscope of magnification 100. He makes 20 observations and finds that the average width of the hair in the field of view of the microscope is 3.5 mm. What is the estimate on the thickness of hair?
Question 23. Answer the following:
(a) You are given a thread and a metre scale. How will you estimate the diameter of the thread? (b) A screw gauge has a pitch of 1.0 mm and 200 divisions on the circular scale. Do you think it is possible to increase the accuracy of the screw gauge arbitrarily by increasing the number of divisions on the circular scale? (c) The mean diameter of a thin brass rod is to be measured by vernier callipers. Why is a set of 100 measurements of the diameter expected to yield a more reliable estimate than a set of 5 measurements only?
Question 24. The photograph of a house occupies an area of 1.75 cm2 on a 35 mm slide. The slide is projected on to a screen, and the area of the house on the screen is 1.55 m 2. What is the linear magnification of the projector-screen arrangement?
Question 25. 10. State the number of significant figures in the following: (a) 0.007 m2 (b) 2.64 x 104 kg (c) 0.2370 g cm-3 (d) 6.320 J (e) 6.032 N m-2 (f) 0.0006032 m2
Question 26. ‘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.
Question 27. The mass of a box measured by a grocer’s balance is 2.3 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?
Question 28. A physical quantity P is related to four observables a, b, c and d as follows:
The percentage errors of measurement in a, b, c and d are 1%, 3%, 4% and 2%, respectively. What is the percentage error in the quantity P? If the value of P calculated using the above relation turns out to be 3.763, to what value should you round off the result? Question 29. 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.
Question 30. A famous relation in physics relates ‘moving mass’ m to the ‘rest mass’ m0 of a particle in terms of its speed v and the speed of light c. (This relation first arose as a consequence of special relativity due to Albert Einstein). A boy recalls the relation almost correctly but forgets where to put the constant c. He writes:
