Activity 8

Free fall Motion

Solve applying the equations for free fall motion

1. A student drops a ball from the top of a building. The ball takes 2.8 s to reach the ground.
a. What was the ball’s speed just before hitting the ground?
b. What is the height of the building?

2. You can perform a popular trick by dropping any peso bill (Ex. 500 peso bill )lengthwise
through the thumb and forefinger of a classmate. Tell your classmate to grab the peso bill as
fast as possible and he/she can keep the money if he/she catches it. The length of the peso
bill is 15.7 cm and the average human reaction time is about 0.20 s. Will your classmate catch
the bill and keep the money?

3. a) A boy throws a stone straight upward with an initial speed of 15 m/s. What maximum height
will the stone reach before falling back down?
b) What would be the maximum height of the stone if the boy and the stone were on the
surface of the Moon, where the acceleration due to gravity is only ⅙ that of the Earth’s?

4. In the figure below, a student at the window on the second floor of a dorm sees his Physics
teacher walking on the sidewalk beside the building. He drops a water balloon from 18 m
above the ground when the teacher is 1 m away from the point directly beneath the window. If
the teacher is 1.7 m tall and walks at a constant velocity of 0.450 m/s, would the water balloon
hit her? If not, how close does it come?
5. A pollution-sampling rocket is launched straight upward with rockets providing a constant
acceleration of 12 m/s² for the first 1,000 m of flight. At that point the rocket motors cut off
and the rocket itself is in free fall. Ignore air resistance.
a). What is the rocket’s speed when the engines cut off?
b) What is the maximum altitude reached by this rocket?
c) What is the time it takes to get to its maximum altitude?

6. The Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia and the Willis Tower (formerly Chicago Sears Tower)
have heights of about 452 m and 443 m respectively. If objects were dropped from the top of
What would be the difference in the time it takes the objects to reach the ground?

Petronas Twin Towers Willis Tower