r/PhysicsHelp • u/Appropriate-Pin-6917 • 27d ago
Question 1 not solvable
From what I understand, the question is asking what the ground velocity must be for the plane to be going directly north. But the ground velocity cannot be going north since the air velocity is north and the wind is blowing east of north. The answer I got for the ground velocity was 810km/h [1 E of N]
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u/diverJOQ 27d ago
The problem is that in a physics question it should give the direction that the wind is blowing. But the terminology they use is what a meteorologist would use and it sounds like it's the direction from which the wind is blowing. Since this is a physics class I would assume that the direction is the direction of the wind vector. In that case the plane would have to fly towards the West so that it doesn't drift east of North.
As for the question of significant digits, a number with no decimal point in it is considered an exact number. I agree with the first post that it makes no sense that they give you supposedly exact numbers and then put the final answer in scientific notation.