On a trip to the Colorado Rockies, you notice that when the freeway goes steeply down a hill, there are emergency exits every fe
w miles. These emergency exits are straight ramps which leave the freeway and are sloped uphill. They are designed to stop runaway trucks and cars that lose their brakes on downhill stretches of the freeway even if the road is covered with ice. You are curious, so you stop at the next emergency exit to take some measurements. You determine that the exit rises at an angle of 10o from the horizontal and is 100m long. What is the maximum speed of a truck that you are sure will be stopped by this road, even if the frictional force of the road surface is negligible?
The maximum speed that the truck can have and still be stopped by the 100m road is the speed that it can go and be stopped at exactly 100m. Since there is no friction, this problem is similar to a projectile problem. You can think of the problem as being a ball tossed into the air except here you know the highest point and you are looking for the initial velocity needed to reach that point. Also, in this problem, because there is an incline, the value of the acceleration due to gravity is not simply g; it is the component of gravity acting parallel to the incline. Since we are working parallel to the plane, also keep in mind that the highest point is given in the problem as 100m. Solving for the initial velocity needed to have the truck stop after 100m, you should find that the maximum velocity the truck can have and be stopped by the road is 18.5 m/s.
Kinetic energy is formed when the object is in motion. Potential energy is the energy that is formed relative to others.
One of the example is Corn flour factory.
Corn turned into flour by a windmill that moved by the waterfall. Movement of the mill is relative to the power given by waterfall (potential energy) and the spinning crushes the corn into flour (kinetic energy)
