7 thoughts on “Homework #4”

  3. slashley

    On the written part, I don’t understand how we’re supposed to draw the graph.. can you explain this further please? Not sure what to use as plots..

  4. sarestad

    On the written portion of Homework #4, when graphing the vectors, is it possible to line them up into the shape of a triangle, even if the distances are all different? Does it matter if they don’t match end to end, due to size, or is that not important?

    Also, you haven’t posted anything on vector displacement on any of the slides (not that I noticed, at least). It may just be very simple that you assume we know it, but as simple as it may end up being, I am not sure how to approach the displacement.

    I hope my questions make sense.

  5. physics131-willocq Post author

    You have 3 displacement vectors and the first thing to do is write each of those vectors in terms of their x and y components.

    To add the 3 vectors together, add the x components and y components separately. This will give you the x and y components of the vector sum.

    Now you should be able to draw the sum. However for the graph you should use the tip-to-end method to add the 3 vectors and find the vector sum. This is just like I showed on Monday.

    Does that help?

  7. physics131-willocq Post author

    As I showed on Monday, you can find the x and y components of vector A, i.e. Ax and Ay if you know the magnitude of vector A and its angle (theta) relative to the horizontal axis (x axis):

    Ax = A cos(theta)
    Ay = A sin(theta)

Leave a Reply