Winter 1998

A student wrote:

I'm confused about how the vectors for problem 78 in chapter 4 are setup. The wording in the question makes it extremely hard to discern what the relationship between the air/ground velocity/direction of the plane are. Could you possibly post a picture of the vectors?

Prof. Seidler responds:

Well, sort of... the point of the problem is that the exact geometry of the vectors needs to be determined. What you know is that the vector equation v_wg + v_pw = v_pg holds, and that the vector v_pg = 150mi/h yhat. In the graph below, the dashed circle centered about the origin has a radius equal to the magnitude of v_wg, and the circle centered about the head of v_pg has a radius of v_pw. So, due to the constraints imposed by the magnitudes of the vectors v_pw and v_wg, a final picture of the vectors will have v_wg starting at the origin and ending at one of the intersection dots, and then have v_pw starting at the chosen intersection point and ending at the head of v_pg. You should be able to use either analytic geometry or the law of cosines to answer the problem.