Kinetic Energy - AP Physics 1

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Question

A bungie jumper of mass is attached to a bungie with a constant of . The unstretched length of the bungie is . What is the maxmimum velocity of the jumper?

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Answer

Think about this scenario practically. After the jumper jumps, he will begin accelerating at a rate of . This rate will stay constant until the bungie cord begins to stretch. At this point, the jumper has traveled a distance of . The rate of acceleration will now decrease and ultimately reach a rate of . This is the point at which the force from the bungie cord is equal and opposite to the force of gravity. This is also the point at which the jumper is traveling at his or her maxmium velocity. With all of this in mind, let's start writing expressions for the scenario.

The main expression we will use will be the one for conservation of energy:

Plugging in our expressions for these variables and removing initial kinetic energy, we get:

Rearranging for velocity:

We simply need to find the height distance between the jumper's initial position and the position at which the jumper is traveling at his or her greatest velocity. As previously mentioned, the point of highest velocity is the point at which the force from the bungie cord is equal and opposite to the force of gravity:

Rearranging for , we get:

This is the distance that the bungie is stretched. Therefore, we can say that the total height distance between the initial and final state is the length of the unstretched bungie cord plus the distance the cord has stretched:

Plugging this back into the equation for final velocity, we get:

We have values for all of our variables, so we can simply solve for the final velocity:

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