A 70 kg astronaut is floating free in space several metres from her spacecraft. She is holding a 1.6 kg wrench which she can hurl with a speed of 22.0 m/s. a. In which direction should she hurl the wrench so that she can move towards the spacecraft? b. What would be her speed towards the spacecraft?
Answers
Answer:
As written, you’d get an answer of 0.5 meters per second. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen.
* 22 meters per second is approximately 50mph. Spacesuits are bulky and not designed for rapid movements: if she was to throw the wrench that fast, she’d likely damage the spacesuit, possibly causing rapid decompression. That’s about half as fast as the world record for throwing a fastball, after all!
* The sort of over-hand throw necessary for maximum velocity, in addition to being a pretty serious suit rip risk, would also impart rotation to the astronaut, over which she would have little control.
* 0.5 meters per second is too fast; she runs the risk of bouncing back before she can find something to hold onto on the spacecraft.
Since she is only a few meters out from the spacecraft and not moving with any significant speed away from it, her best bet is to flick the wrench away from her in a way that will push her towards the spacecraft slowly and in a controlled manner without giving her any rotational torque.
Also, if this person masses 70kg counting the spacesuit, she’s probably too thin to have passed safety guidelines to be in space in the first place… (Maybe she is aJapanese schoolgirl, in which case we’re probably operating by anime rules, so she can throw as fast as she wants and she’ll nail the rotation perfectly anyway)
Explanation:
Answer:
Explanation:
a) In tbe opposite direction to the spacecraft.
b) The law of conservation of momentum gives