Neglecting air resistance, how far downrange (horizontally) will the bullet be one 1s (second) later?

Question

A rifle with a muzzle velocity of 10.0 m/s is fired horizontally from a 500m tall tower. Neglecting air resistance, how far downrange (horizontally) will the bullet be one 1s (second) later?

Answer 1

Hi Erika,

While the bullet is in the air, there's no horizontal forces acting on it (we're neglecting air resistance; there's gravity, but that's a vertical force with no bearing on the bullet's x-direction movement). Therefore, the acceleration of the bullet in the x-direction is 0, by F = ma. Thus, we can treat this as a constant velocity problem; the initial velocity of the bullet is 10 m/s. There's no acceleration, so we use the formula

x = vt

x = 10m/s·1s = 10m

So the bullet moves 10 meters.

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