A submarine was floating at the depth of 420 metres below the sea level. If it ascends 210 metres,
what will be the new position? Express the position in terms of height.
Answers
Answer:
Let's take sea level as our horizon: if you are on the water surface, your height is
h
=
0
. Also, let's assume a vertical axis pointing upwards. This means that the submarine, being
800
feet away from the horizon in the opposite direction with respect to the axis, will have a negative height of
h
0
=
−
800
.
If it ascends
250
feets, it gains altitude, so the new height is
h
1
=
−
800
+
250
=
−
550
feet.
Note that this problem heavily depends on the coordinate system you adopt. In fact, I may have chosen an axes whose origin is set at the initial position of the submarine (which would have become the
h
0
=
0
), pointing upwards, and the new position would have been
h
1
=
0
+
250
=
250
feet.
The only things that won't change is that the new position will be
250
"more" than the old one. But if you want to compute absolute values, you need to specify a coordinate system, otherwise you may have as many answers as you want.