course_planning:183_projects:s20_week_11_problems

Project 11: Post-Apocalypse Now Part 2

Stuck in the wilderness for a number of days and unable to contact the people in your bunker, your team along with Willard and Kilgore set out to find a new safe haven. After traversing the scorched wasteland for a number of days you see postings for “Thunderdome”, which promises “sanctuary for all”. You reach a canyon with a signpost that indicates that the Thunderdome is on the other side of the canyon. The other side of the canyon is 30 meters below the height of where you currently stand and about 610 meters from the ground. The canyon appears to be 200 meters across. Beside you is a run-down car whose engine does not seem to run but after some initial messing around you realize that a battery is connected to the wheels and that a percentage of the energy that is being lost to friction is being stored in the battery. Further investigation tells you that the battery energy can be converted directly into kinetic energy by pushing a big red button in the car. Investigating the spring, you see that it can compress 13m and has a spring constant of 650000 N/m. The car is 20 meters from the spring and from the spring to the edge of the cliff is 50 meters. When you push the car back to the spring you measure that the tires have changed temperature by 1 kelvin. You need to know if propelling yourself with the spring will get you to safety.

Project 11: Engineering a movie stunt

black-panther.jpg

You and your team have been hired by Marvel Entertainment to develop a stunt for the next Black Panther movie.

In a scene meant to take place in T'Challa's homeland of Wakanda, a young T'Challa is searching for vibranium (Wakanda's chief export) on a large hill. While digging, he disturbs a large boulder, which begins to roll down the hill after him. In the scene, T'Challa is meant to sprint down the mountain while the boulder rolls behind him, catching up, but not running over T'Challa.

The production studio has designed several boulders (some solid spheres, some hollow spheres, and some cylindrical ones) for the stunt, but doesn't want to manufacture and ship all of them to the set. Also, they have yet to choose a stunt person because they aren't sure how fast that person will need to run down the hill. They've asked your team to design the stunt including the hill and to produce a graph that demonstrates how the speed of the boulder will change as it rolls down the hill. It's foam, but it's big.

Remember this is Hollywood, so make sure the stunt is exciting!

  • course_planning/183_projects/s20_week_11_problems.txt
  • Last modified: 2020/07/30 02:31
  • by pwirving