An aircraft reports that after take-off it has travelled 250 km in a direction 40°…
PHYSICS · Multi-part · A Level · Physics · Mechanics and materials · Mechanics and materials
Problem
An aircraft reports that after take-off it has travelled 250 km in a direction 40° north of east.
(i) Using the scale 1 cm = 25 km, draw a vector diagram to represent the aircraft’s displacement. Show the scale and mark the arrowhead clearly.
(ii) The drawing space available in that direction on your page is limited to 6 cm. Determine the smallest whole-number scale (in km per cm) that allows the entire displacement vector to fit within this space, and redraw the vector using this new scale.
(iii) Comment briefly on how changing the scale affects the precision with which small differences in displacement could be shown on the diagram.