A car drove 5 laps around a circular track(that has a radius of 50 meters) in 90 seconds

Question

a) what distance did the car travel around one lap?

b) how much time did it take for the car to travel one lap?

c) how fast was the car driving?

d) was the car accelerating? How do you know?

Answer 1

(a). calculate the circumference of the circular track = 2π*r, where r is the radius of the track.

(b). If car takes 90s to drive 5 laps, how long will it take to drive 1 lap? Easy to calculate.

(c). Using answers for distance from (a), and time from (b), calculate speed = distance/time

(d). The problem does not have information to say that the car's speed was changing (i.e. it was accelerating) as it went around the circular track. Our estimations are based on the assumption of uniform circular motion. Now, the car's velocity vector does have an acceleration simply because it is constantly changing direction.